The Vampire Leader
by Marcus S. Lazarus
Summary: What if things had been the other way around when Lucian and Sonja escaped? Centuries after the loss of her lover and her child, Sonja's quest to avenge her adopted people takes an unexpected turn...
1. Old Losses

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: I was always surprised that nobody gave this storyline a shot before now, so I thought I'd try and write it myself; one-shot for now, but that may expand if I receive enough interest

The Vampire Leader

It had been almost a thousand years since his death, and she still remembered every moment as though it had been only yesterday.

The initial plan had been so straightforward; he would escape, he would wait for her, and then she would join him as they made a new life for themselves, away from the political and racial suppression that had frustrated them for so long.

She should have expected that he would attempt to free his brethren at the same time as he tried to escape himself, but she had long since resigned herself to the fact that Lucian would not have been the man she loved if he had done anything else. Even after her father learned the truth about their liaisons, they might still have been able to escape, but she had underestimated the intensity of her father's contempt for Lucian. As they fled through the fortress's underground passages, the other Death Dealers had dropped oil barrels into the passages as an attempted delaying tactic, and one such barrel had hit Lucian when he ran under an opening slightly too quickly, the blow stunning him long enough for the vampires above to start the fire before she could get him to safety.

Even an immortal could not have survived the damage he sustained in those moments- regardless of his rapid ability to heal, the fire had simply consumed him too quickly- but Lucian's fundamental nobility had shone through regardless. His body burning in agony, Lucian had launched himself through the hole leading to the courtyard, before engaging the vampires around him as a fighter more ferocious than the berserker warriors she had heard about in tales of the Vikings. The flames had continued to consume his fur as he transformed, but he had still continued his assault on their enemies, the Death Dealers unprepared for his power and precision strikes as opposed to the feral assault they had come to expect from the surviving werewolves.

He had still died in the end, but the visibility of the threat he posed had been enough to draw attention away from her as she made her own escape. She had managed to grab a crossbow from another Death Dealer to try and help him escape- people had been so focused on his more visible threat that they barely even noticed her attempts to flee- but it had swiftly proven useless; she didn't need her long experience with death to know that he wasn't going to make it. When her father had emerged to try and capture them both, Lucian's agonised roar at her to run had made it clear that escape was all that she could do to honour him; he was far too injured to survive what had been done to him, and her remaining would accomplish nothing.

If anything, she only wished that she had left a few seconds earlier; another Death Dealer had managed to strike her in the chest with a mace before she could reach the castle walls, the same fight leaving her with a nasty scar on the left side of her face that had nearly claimed her eye. While neither wound had hindered her efforts to escape, the damage sustained had caused her to suffer a miscarriage once she had made it out of the fortress. With that casual blow, she had lost the child that she had only recently realised the existence of, along with the last part of her love that she would have ever been able to hold.

When she reached the rendezvous location, the lycans that Lucian had assembled to his cause had been devastated to learn of his death, but the blood of the child she had carried had been enough to convince even the strongest doubters of the sincerity of her feelings for him. The one called Raze in particular had made it clear that he would follow her leadership, which had been more than enough for her to establish her authority over them as she prepared to launch her counter-attack.

The werewolves might have been animals, but the lycans deserved better than to be treated as second-class citizens; besides, on a personal level, the lycans had accepted her _because_ of her child, where the vampires had automatically rejected her for the same reason.

As far as she was concerned, if her family would suppress an entire race because of what their forebears had been, she would prefer not to even consider herself a vampire any more.

That night, in the memory of her lost love, she had dedicated herself to both the destruction of the vampires who had condemned them for nothing more than loving each other, and the salvation of the lycans who had been consigned to slavery merely because of the circumstances of their birth. Raze might have been a newly-turned lycan, but his strength of will had been more than enough to compensate for that as he rallied the werewolves to join them in their attack on the fortress, particularly when all that was needed was to ensure that the werewolves targeted the enemies they would have gone after anyway. Combined with her own tactical knowledge, it hadn't taken long for them to mount an assault on the fortress a couple of nights after Lucian's demise, werewolves and lycans alike attacking the fortress close to dawn, with her fighting alongside Raze. When the sun rose as the battle continued, Raze had provided her with the skin of a slain werewolf to provide cover for any lycans who might make mistakes in the heat of battle; no vampire would willingly have donned such a disguise, and the scent it still carried was strong enough to trick any of the more feral werewolves still present into thinking that she was one of them.

The Elders and Tanis had escaped the massacre that night, but what really galled her about the memory was that, in their last face-to-face encounter, her father had _still _dared to act as though he had been the wronged party. She had done nothing more than choose a partner he did not approve of- regardless of what Lucian had done for them in the past and whose only 'sin' had been committed in her defence- and yet he had treated her as though she had rejected everything he had sought to build when all she wanted was to be allowed to live in peace with the man she loved and their child.

Even with their child and Lucian dead during their escape, Viktor had continued to act as though she was some kind of plague victim, unwilling to even consider her side in favour of his own fixation on the purity of his bloodlines; she wouldn't have been surprised if he had decided to execute her if he had managed to capture her. It had almost been a pleasure to stab him in the head during their final confrontation that day in the fortress, even if she had been uncertain that such a blow would have killed him for good even as she delivered it. She would have followed his fallen body to make sure, but her priority had to be Lucian's people rather than her own desires for revenge.

It hadn't taken long for her to hear reports that Viktor had survived, along with Tanis and the other two Elders, but she had decided to avoid pressing that issue at the time; her father might have had high expectations for her, but she wasn't arrogant enough to think that she was a match for an Elder. During a later skirmish, she had used her armour and the corpse of another female Death Dealer to fake her death to lull her father into a false sense of security, and Raze's subsequent plan to fake his own demise with the aid of opportunistic vampire Kraven had been just the additional edge they needed.

_Raze_…

He was not a substitute for Lucian in her heart, of course- she had long resolved herself to commit to Lucian's memory, and Raze held too much respect for her lost love to even consider taking their relationship further himself- but she had come to consider him a brother as well as a brother-in-arms over the centuries, and she felt that Raze saw her the same way. As far as most lycans were concerned, Raze was the true symbol of their rebellion against the vampires, and he had developed his own skills and understanding of tactics and combat over the centuries, but he still deferred to her command when they were planning a particularly powerful offensive assault. Having already witnessed him in action when he was human, she had been impressed at Raze's skills even before he was turned into a lycan, and the evident respect he had for Lucian's memory had further ensured her high opinion of him. For his part, while Raze had initially accepted her only in Lucian's memory, she had proven herself in his eyes over the years, and he had more than once stated that he considered her a true lycan in every way that mattered.

It was a point of frustration to her that she was unable to serve as a 'true' lycan by contributing to the cause as more than a single warrior, but even Raze's high opinion of her couldn't change the fact that anyone she bit would become a vampire rather than a lycan. While she had come to accept her fate, she refused to turn anyone she might encounter, relying on Raze to rally new recruits to their cause in her name; she could cope with being an outcast from the rest of her species, but she wasn't about to force anyone else into her position who didn't have to be there.

She had remained hidden for centuries, working to find some means of turning the tables on her father as her adopted people were hunted to the point of extinction, forced into an alliance with a vampire she would have ignored as dangerous to the Coven back when she still thought them worth defending…

But it would all be worth it in the end.

Now, almost eight hundred years since the death of her lover and child, Sonja was almost ready to punish her father for what he had done to her so many centuries ago.


	2. Current Plans

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Still not quite at the main action yet, but we get to the main events of the first film in the next chapter; hope you enjoy this new look into what make Sonja tick…

The Vampire Leader

Sitting in the underground laboratory that was her current base, Sonja couldn't help but reflect how things had fallen so far.

She wasn't self-centred enough to regret her decision to join the lycans merely because of the creature comforts she'd sacrificed- her position in court had never been that important to her beyond the relative freedom it gave her to pursue her own interests outside of her role as a Death Dealer- but there were times when it could be more uncomfortable than others. They'd done their best with their current accommodations as more and more lycans gathered together in preparation for their upcoming assault, but their enhanced senses did little to make this place pleasant accommodation.

It was also far from a sufficiently sterile lab, but it was the best that they could do to provide Singe with the appropriate resources for his work. He had been an unconventional choice to be turned into a lycan, but he had proven his worth since Sonja and Raze had brought him into the fold, he was even one of the few lycans to be aware of her true species and role in the war who had not been present during her original assault on her father's fortress. A scientist dying of cancer, he had been turned some years ago to offer his expertise in accomplishing her personal goal of artificially creating the hybrid that her father had sought to prevent, and had continued to keep up with modern developments despite the obvious limitations of his need for secrecy.

She might have had an easier time achieving that goal if she had simply tried to have another child, but even if she was at war, there were lines that she would not cross, and that was one of them. Putting aside her enduring loyalty to Lucian, she would not create a child simply to force it into a position where it would have to kill its grandfather; after her father's attempts to use her to further his own agenda, she refused to repeat his actions with her own child. Singe had regular access to her blood in his attempts to create a means of blending the two races, but he and Raze both knew never to suggest that she attempt to create a child the old-fashioned way, even if they found a naturally-born lycan who would be willing to have sex with a vampire.

She had dedicated herself to ensuring her father's demise, but she would not create a child to provide the means to do so; she was better than that (Even if there hadn't been the obvious potential handicap that a natural hybrid may only be possible when both parents were born into their current state; very few females had ever been bitten by the lycans, and the need for them to stay underground as the vampires continued to hunt them made it hard to find a safe location for a pregnant lycan).

Still, even with the potential hurdle of their hybrid-related difficulties, the current plan was going well. They'd tracked most of Corvinus's likely mortal descendants, and even if some of them had proven fruitless, the remaining candidates were all located in or around Budapest, and they even had the interesting bonus that it would be the full moon on the night of their attack against the coven. Most lycans had 'evolved' beyond the limitation of only transforming on the night of the full moon itself, but its light would still give them a useful advantage in terms of raw strength, regardless of the Death Dealers serving as the mansion's defence.

Studying the photographs of the coven's current Death Dealers, Sonja smiled wistfully as she came across the image that she considered the most important photograph; the image of Selene, her father's unofficial adopted daughter.

She was never entirely certain how she should feel about her father's warped desire to 'reclaim' her by turning someone who looked so like her- she varied between being touched that she had such an impact on him and outraged that he still dared to act as though she had been the one in the wrong for her relationship with Lucian- but in a strange way, she nevertheless felt a certain kinship with the woman who could be seen as her sister. While Selene's actions against the lycans were fundamentally misguided- with the werewolves gone, lycans tended to avoid attacking innocent humans these days apart from some accidents in early transformations, even if the rumours she'd heard about Selene's turning could be accurate for the time- Sonja could still admire her 'little sister's' skills in combat from an objective perspective.

Their resemblance had also inspired her to take more action regarding changing her appearance. The scar on the side of her face was significant enough to make a distinction between the two, but since seeing photos of her 'sister', Sonja had taken to keeping her hair in a style between her old hair length and Selene's shorter style, keeping most of it tied back in a ponytail with a couple of lengths on either side of her face to increase the distinction between herself and Selene; most of the vampires who knew her personally had died in the first assault on her father's fortress, but it never hurt to take precautions.

She sometimes wished that she could convince other vampires that the lycans were not really monsters, but she knew that centuries of tradition and belief would be hard to shake; she had known the lycans from the moment of their creation, thanks to her childhood with Lucian, but too many only knew the old tales of the first werewolves and tarred all lycans with the same brush. In the heat of battle, and after centuries of conflict, it was easier to eliminate the active threat immediately than try and make people see that their prejudices were mistaken.

That was one of the few reasons she tolerated her current alliance with Kraven; he might be an egotistical moron with ideas and ambition above his ability, but at least he had enough influence to set things up the way they wanted them. If all went according to plan, after Amelia had arrived at the mansion, her forces could mount their attack while Amelia was resting and Marcus was recuperating, allowing them to deal with the Elders at their weakest. With Kraven's men deliberately placed in poor defensive positions, Sonja and her chosen team could eliminate the Elders and then allow Kraven to stage a counter-offensive, resulting in an iron-clad treaty with the lycans when faced with a position where the alternative was mutually assured destruction.

Of course, Kraven would be unaware of the existence of the hybrids until it was too late, just in case he tried anything funny to turn the tables on them later, but that wasn't something that Sonja thought about much; her main priority right now was ensuring that the hybrids were ready in time for the big push, in order to ensure that nobody tried to subvert her goals.

She might have avoided having children to get to this point, but she acknowledged that she had still crossed more than a few lines to achieve her goal. One of the main things she had insisted on as she took command of the lycans was that they never attack the innocent, but she had naturally been forced to put that rule aside when tracking candidates for the possible heirs to the Corvinus bloodline, as well as preparing for the upcoming big push; the possibility of finding the key to victory was too important for morality to enter into it, and numbers would be needed if that plan failed.

Once her father and the Elders were eliminated, she could focus on ensuring that her lycan forces were more careful about recruitment; right now, numbers were going to be vital for this plan to work, even with her efforts to create a secret weapon.

And on that topic, with Trix and Forbes having failed to claim Michael Corvin, it looked like it was going to be up to her and Raze to take steps to collect the next 'candidate'; at least this time she knew where to go, and Kraven's own ego and desire to cover his tracks should result in him neatly discouraging further pursuit without them even having to ask him to do so…


	3. The First Sighting

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Still short, but I assure you the chapters will get longer as the changes start to occur…

The Vampire Leader

If she hadn't been so close to the deadline, Sonja would never have risked coming out after a possible candidate this soon after a failed attempt to capture them. She knew that she could have stayed in the lair and continued her preparations, but Raze had suggested it could be useful to have her available as an 'ace-in-the-hole' just in case something went wrong, particularly when the surviving Death Dealer from the earlier assault may know who they were after. Having borrowed one of Raze's coats- it might be large on her, but when wrapped around her and closed it effectively concealed her vampiric scent from any of the other lycans present on this assault, just in case she stood downwind at an inconvenient moment.

She had noticed a distinctive Jaguar sitting outside Michael Corvin's apartment building when she arrived, but she wasn't going to worry about that just yet; the numbers she'd sent into the building should be enough to handle anything. Three lycans had been sent to the upper levels to try and capture Michael directly while also eliminating any vampires who might be tracking him, while Raze was waiting downstairs to try and intercept Michael if he tried to escape.

She just hoped that the lycans didn't go too far; they wanted Michael alive, and lycans getting hungry wouldn't help them complete their work. That was one area where vampire prejudice against lycans was depressingly accurate; unless you were particularly strong-willed, or had the right genetics, when someone was first turned into a lycan they tended to resort to very violent methods to make their points, and by the time they were at the point when they had control of their wolf they were used to handling things that way. Raze was there to remind them that they didn't have the luxury of going all-out against their target on this occasion, leaving her to make sure that Michael didn't get away by accident.

The sound of loud roars- only just audible from outside thanks to her enhanced hearing- suggested that things were proving more problematic than she'd expected, but she had faith that it wasn't anything to worry about just yet; if they just focused on getting a sample of Michael's blood, everything else should be fine…

Then she saw Michael Corvin run out of the building, followed closely by a dark-haired vampire dressed in black leather who both dived into the car, Sonja's eyes widening as she recognised the vampire in question.

_Selene_…

Of all the circumstances that she had pictured that would have resulted in her being in such close proximity to her 'sister', seeing her act to save their latest target was not one that had immediately come to mind. Selene had always avoided hurting humans according to the reports she'd received of Death Dealer activity, so she couldn't be here simply to hunt for food, but there'd been so little evidence to suggest that her lycans were actually following Michael in particular…

As the Jaguar began to drive away, Sonja took care to stay out of sight- briefly noting and disregarding some distinctive scents from the car; she'd never have noticed the first if she hadn't spent so long with its source, and the second didn't smell like it would be particularly serious- before she pulled out her phone and called Raze; if Michael was already on the move, she didn't need to worry about accidentally alerting him to their presence.

"_He's outside_-" Raze said, his voice low and hard to hear over the phone.

"Did you get the sample?" Sonja asked, focusing the conversation on what mattered most right now.

"_Yes_…" Raze said.

"Then deposit it somewhere secure and let them go," Sonja said. "If Michael's acquired a guardian, we don't want to show just how interested we are in him until we have to, and we still have a couple of days until we need the hybrid formula to be completed."

"_But Corvin_-" Raze began.

"Has been bitten by you, in which case he will come to us sooner or later," Sonja interjected, still smiling thoughtfully as she stared after the car. "Besides… if what I've seen is any indication, I do believe my 'little sister' is already showing that she's more like me than our father would like."

"You think so?" Raze said, Sonja's attention shifting from the phone to her lieutenant as he walked out of Corvin's building, his jacket torn open to reveal an old scar where Viktor had attempted to stab him during their first assault and only narrowly missed his heart, his eyes wideningin surprise as he looked at the place where the car had been. "She doesn't even know-"

"She came all the way out here on the possibility that he might be in danger; trained warriors don't go to those lengths on a casual hunch," Sonja explained. "From what I've read of my 'sister', she doesn't go to those kind of lengths on a whim; it may be _slightly _more difficult for her to complete her duty than my father would expect."

"You're sure?" Raze asked.

"I didn't turn out like he expected, did I?" Sonja pointed out, smiling over at Raze before she looked more critically at him. "That said, I assume you have the sample?"

"Here," Raze said, reaching into his coat and taking out a small glass phial, clearly filled with blood, that he handed over to her.

"Good," Sonja said, nodding in satisfaction as she studied the phial; it wasn't enough to perfect the serum, but it would allow them to run the test that would confirm whether it was worth pursuing Michael any further.

For the moment, Selene was clearly interested in keeping Michael safe, there was no reason for any of the vampires to suspect that he might be the key to their work, and if Raze's bite had been obvious Selene would have probably shot Michael already.

So long as Selene didn't look _too _closely at Michael before she'd had the chance to bond, this could still work out…


	4. Taking a Gambit

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: A shift in perspective this time as we start to look at recent events from Selene's point of view, set shortly after Michael's escape from the manor and looking at what happened to her after her escape from Raze

The Vampire Leader

Sitting in the mansion, Selene stared in frustration at the wall as she turned over what she had discovered so far.

Not only had she discovered hints of a lycan presence in this city that was potentially greater than anything they'd faced since Raze's time, but the lycans' evident interest in Michael in particular raised several questions that she had no way of answering; why would lycans show such specific interest in a single human?

Unfortunately, her efforts to question Michael hadn't amounted to much; he'd spent most of the previous day unconscious while she was stuck under that pier after passing out in the car due to her injury fighting that lycan, and even after she'd made it back to the manor, Michael had escaped while she was distracted having to deal with Kraven's egocentric queries about the nature of her interest in Michael.

Combined with Kraven's unusual comment about Raze during their earlier confrontation, Selene had been left with only one option; enter the mansion's forbidden archives and see what she could find about Kraven's role in the death of Raze. The first few books that she had investigated hadn't turned up anything more interesting than pictures of early Death Dealers carrying out increasingly brutal assaults on lycan prisoners- even animals didn't deserve the kind of treatment depicted- but Selene was puzzled by the tone of the texts at times; it was as though Tanis had written these books while taking care _not _to mention something, practically skimming over the details of Raze's early assaults apart from a brief reference to Lucian, an early lycan leader whose death had prompted Raze's own campaign. She eventually dismissed that question when she had finally found a more promising-looking passage talking about the events she'd only really heard about before now.

_Of the scores of Brave Souls who entered Raze's fortress, a single Vampire survived: Kraven, who was richly rewarded for not only setting the great blaze, but for returning with evidence of the Lycan Master's demise: the branded skin, cut from Raze's very arm._

It was an interesting story, but when Selene got down to it, the skin wasn't exactly hard evidence; skin could be taken from a living being just as easily as it could be cut off a corpse, particularly given the reports she'd heard of Raze's strength (She'd once heard one of her teachers mention a rumour that Raze had killed a lycan _before _he was even turned, although her other instructors had quickly dismissed that story as nothing).

She had so many theories, but so little evidence; nothing she'd found so far could be more than her own paranoia and dislike of Kraven affecting her judgement…

Thoughts on the possible other interpretations of Kraven's story were cut short as Selene turned the page and found herself staring at a very distinctive picture. The chest and arms depicted might be lacking a face due to a clearly deliberately torn page, but the powerful physique was virtually unmistakeable; how many lycans could be _that _well-built, particularly with that distinctive scar on their chest, as though someone had stabbed them and only just missed the heart…?

It might be a series of coincidences as opposed to genuine evidence, but it was enough for Selene right now; too many pieces were falling into place for them to _all_ be a coincidence.

As she walked out of the library after putting the books back in their place, she fought down the urge to jump when she heard footsteps approaching her location, but relaxed when the only person to come around the corner was the servant-girl, Erika; a witness to her activities might be an issue, but she hadn't done anything serious enough for Erika to bother reporting it even if anyone would believe her over Selene.

"I've been looking for you everywhere-" Erika began.

"Not now," Selene interjected, walking impatiently past the younger vampire.

"He's been bitten," Erika said, prompting Selene to turn and look firmly at her. "Your human; he's been marked by a lycan."

"Did Kraven put you up to this?" Selene asked, already doubting the story; this was very likely to be some kind of twisted joke…

"No!" Erika protested, a desperation about her manner that couldn't be faked. "I saw the wound with my own eyes; I swear it!"

Unfortunately, Selene was left with little choice but to believe Erika's words, which reminded her of that brief encounter between Michael and that lycan at the doors of the elevator before she'd manage to drag Michael to safety.

In the chaos of their escape, the lycan- _Raze_?- could have bitten Michael without Selene noticing it, and she hadn't exactly checked him over in depth; there hadn't been any obvious signs of injury, and she'd attributed the scent of blood to blood from the injuries she'd give his attacker…

Which meant that, if Erika was telling the truth, Michael was a _lycan_…

_No_.

He wasn't part of this war yet; he was a lycan through circumstance, and nothing more.

He couldn't be just another mindless, rampaging beast; Selene didn't know what she was feeling yet, but she knew that she wasn't about to give up on Michael when there was still a chance.

She _had _to save him…

"But what about the Covenant?" Erika called after her, as Selene turned to walk away. "You know it's forbidden!"

Selene knew the Covenant better than Erika ever could, but she also knew that she didn't care; with an innocent involved in this war who deserved better than to become just another beast, her objective had now become saving Michael's life and exposing Kraven's apparent alliance with Raze.

Unfortunately, if her suspicions about Kraven were correct, her options were limited. Khan's loyalty to Viktor was normally an advantage to her, but it also meant that he wouldn't disobey Viktor's rules about putting Kraven in charge unless he had a clear reason to act otherwise, and so far Kraven hadn't actually done anything that would confirm that he was working against the coven. She didn't know Amelia well enough to feel comfortable waiting for the Elder to get here tomorrow so that she could take control of the situation, and the same issue applied to Marcus- something about the way he looked at her when they met always left her feeling like he was waiting for an excuse to attack her- which meant that, if she was going to do anything, she was going to have to take a greater risk.

In order to ensure the survival of her race, she was going to have to defy more than one of the rules she had fought to defend for so many centuries…

* * *

It was almost disappointing how easy it was for her to gain access to the Elders' crypt on her own; she had to reassure herself with the knowledge that she'd only made it that far because she was a trusted member of the Coven, rather than because the coven as a whole was naïve. Awakening an Elder in this manner was dangerous, but she had to hope that what she'd done to reinforce the relevant memory in her mind would be enough for Viktor to hear her plea.

Raising the coffin itself hadn't been too difficult, but actually seeing Viktor in such a withered condition had been a shock all by itself; she had known that Elders were often weak when they slept, but she had never been this close to one prior to an Awakening. Trying to ignore Viktor's shrivelled and desiccated form, Selene bit her wrist to start the blood flowing and then held her wound over the metal dish that would lead to the feeding tube now positioned over Viktor's mouth. For a moment, Selene concentrated on the memory of her message, before stepping back and doing her sleeve up once again before moving the coffin to the recovery area at the back of the chamber. After taking a moment to secure the chamber that had contained Viktor's coffin so that everything would appear undisturbed, Selene set up the assorted tubes and bags of blood that needed to be linked to Viktor, finally standing back with a slight smile as she watched her work.

This might be a risk, but if she could just convince Viktor of the treachery she'd uncovered and buy time to track down where Raze was hiding, she might just have a chance to save the coven and Michael…

The sound of activity outside the chamber ended her work, prompting her to make sure that everything was properly connected to Viktor before she left the room; with everyone focused on the monitors, she should be able to get out of here without anyone immediately reacting. Walking out to examine the screen, she stared in shock at the sight of Michael standing outside the gate, drenched and wearing only a thin T-shirt against the rain, desperately calling her name.

She didn't know what Michael was doing back here, but she had to get him to safety before anyone else found out what he was becoming; if she could keep him contained, she might have a chance…

"Is that Michael?" Kraven asked, glaring at her.

Ignoring the regent's query, Selene leaned over to activate the speaker system as Michael began screaming about what was happening to him; she had to prioritise right now, and pandering to Kraven's ego wasn't one of her issues.

"I'll be right out," she said firmly.

"If you go to him, you'll never be welcome in this house again!" Kraven said, glaring at her in exasperation.

With that statement, Selene decided that she didn't care about even pretending to recognise Kraven's authority any more; no matter what he was up to, she doubted that Kraven would have the nerve to kill an Elder even if Viktor wasn't at his peak yet.

"Now that Viktor's awake," she said, turning to return the regent's glare with one of her own, "we'll see what he has to say about that."

With that statement stunning Kraven and the other vampires into silence, she strode out of the chamber and up towards the garage, getting into a suitable car- her favoured Jaguar was lost, but this should be an acceptable substitute- and heading out of the house, drawing to a halt at the gate to open the door.

"Get in," she said to Michael, indicating the passenger seat.

She had no idea what she would have to deal with when she got back to the mansion after everything that she had done, but she knew that she couldn't stay here and risk Michael being executed for something that he had no control over; until Viktor had the chance to wake up and process her evidence, her first priority was to keep him safe… and that was _just _because she didn't want any innocents to die; it was _not _because of anything else…

* * *

As she watched the car drive away, safely hidden from view- the guard-dogs would never pay attention to her scent; without her usual disguises, she still smelled enough like a vampire to deflect attention- Sonja smiled at the sight.

Considering how he'd managed to escape from the mansion in the first place, it was almost certain that Selene at least suspected what had happened to Michael, even if she had no specific evidence as of yet, and yet she was still acting to try and save him…

Sonja just wished that she had more time to appreciate the irony; centuries since Viktor had lost her, and he continued to make the same 'mistakes' in raising his children through his own prejudices.

Michael was out of the mansion and on the move; all she had to do now was follow Selene without being seen, send Singe out to coordinate the recovery mission while Raze prepared, and they'd have him in custody soon enough.

Once they had his blood, it wouldn't take long to transform Raze into the ultimate weapon against her father…


	5. Sharing Histories

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

"You can never come here again," Selene told Michael as she drove them away from the mansion, trying to focus on the consequences of the situation rather than the situation itself; if Erika was right, what she was doing was far worse than just fleeing the mansion against Kraven's orders. "They'll kill you."

"Why?" Michael asked. "Who are you?"

Not answering verbally, Selene reached over to pull Michael's stained shirt away from his obviously injured shoulder, revealing the twisted sight of what could only be a lycan bite-mark.

_Oh God_… she thought, staring at the injury in horror.

Erika had been telling the truth; Michael had become one of _them_…

She wasn't ready to kill him yet- he hadn't even transformed for the first time; he was only technically on the lycan side through an unfortunate coincidence- but this wasn't going to make it easier for her to convince Viktor to let Michael live…

"Like it or not," she said, deciding to focus on the immediate situation by briefing Michael, "you're in the middle of a war that's raged for the better part of a thousand years; a blood feud between Vampires and Lycans… werewolves."

"What?" Michael said, looking at her in shock.

"Consider yourself lucky," Selene said, indicating Michael's wounded shoulder. "Most humans die within an hour of being bitten by an immortal; the viruses we transmit are deadly."

"Right…" Michael said, clearly sceptical at this news. "And if you bit me, I'd become a vampire instead?"

"No, you'd die," Selene retorted (She wouldn't think about how much she wished it were that simple). "No one's ever survived a bite from both species. By rights, I'd stop the car and kill you myself…"

"Then why are you helping me?" Michael asked.

"I'm not!" Selene retorted, trying to convince herself that it was as simple as she was telling Michael even as she knew it could never be. "I track down and kill your kind; my only interest is finding out why Raze wants you so badly!"

After that statement, Michael sat in silence for a short while as they continued to drive deeper into the city, until he broke the silence.

"This 'Raze' you mentioned…" he began, looking uncertainly at her. "He's one of those… lycans?"

"One of the oldest, and most likely the oldest one still living," Selene confirmed grimly. "He's been presumed dead for centuries, but I've… seen things recently… that have led me to conclude that he's not only alive, but that he's working with someone in the coven… and he's probably the one who bit you."

"Coven?" Michael repeated, looking at her in surprise. "Uh… you're not witches as well, right?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Selene said, outwardly scoffing at the idea even as she found it slightly amusing.

"Hey, I just learned I'm meant to go big and hairy at the next full moon; I _think_ I'm allowed to start questioning reality," Michael countered, smiling briefly at her before he reached up to touch his bite-mark once again, shivering slightly at the thought of what he'd just said. "Uh… just to check, what kind of wolf are we talking about here?"

"The average lycan can reach up to seven feet in height, can walk like a man or on all fours, and has a wolf's head on a human body," Selene answered, briefly looking at Michael. "Does that answer your question?"

"Yeah…" Michael said, nodding at her in an awkward manner, clearly apprehensive about his upcoming transformation.

Not that Selene could blame him; vampires and lycans might both have negative reputations in modern media, but at least vampires were consistently labelled identified as being in control of themselves, even if they were 'corrupted by their thirst' or something ridiculous like that (She might be tempted by human blood, but she wasn't a _slave _to that thirst), where werewolves were generally never in control.

Coming to a halt in front of a suitable safehouse, Selene got out and walked inside, indicating for Michael to follow her up the stairs.

"Since he bit me," Michael began, his tone uncertain yet inquiring, "I've been seeing these… things, these hallucinations…"

"They're not hallucinations, they're memories," Selene clarified. "Since you've been bitten, his memories have been passed to you; it's one of the ways that allows new recruits to gain control."

Michael looked slightly uncertain about her choice of term- she supposed that 'recruits' did sound overly military, but it wasn't like it was inaccurate- but they soon had something else to think about as she walked him into the interrogation room, fighting down the uncharacteristic feeling of shame as he took in his surroundings.

"This is one of the places we use for interrogations," she explained; if she focused on the facts, everything should be fine. "It should be safe."

Lost for anything else to do, Michael picked up a bag of blood from a nearby table and glanced at the name on the side. "Ziodex Industries?"

"We own it," Selene explained; whatever happened to Michael from now on, there was no harm in giving him that kind of information. "First there was synthetic plasma, now this. Once it's approved, it should be our newest cash crop."

"Cloned blood…" Michael said, looking at the bag, obviously impressed. "So that's how you… feed?"

"We used to hunt cattle- it attracts less attention than humans, for obvious reasons- but cloned blood is more common these days, yes," Selene confirmed.

"Huh," Michael said, smiling thoughtfully at that news, before his eyes fell on the surgical tools beside the operating table covered in straps. "What are these for?"

"Lycans are allergic to silver," Selene explained. "If we don't get our bullets out quickly, they die during questioning."

"What do you do with them after?" he asked.

"We put the bullets back in."

"Ah," Michael said, evidently not wanting to hear any more of that particular line of information as he sat down in a chair, staring at the wall for a moment with a contemplative expression on his face before he looked back at her. "Did you ever… use a sword?"

"A sword?" Selene repeated, looking at him in surprise.

"Just… those hallucinations I mentioned…" Michael explained, shrugging awkwardly. "Most of it's blurred, but I have this one really recurring image of a woman in armour carrying a sword, and… well, I can't really see it clearly, but from what I can tell, she looks a bit like you…"

"Unlikely," Selene said after a moment's thought. "I was trained in the use of a sword when I started as a Death Dealer, but I haven't used it for some time, and I certainly never used one at any point where I might have encountered Raze without knowing it."

Michael looked like he was about to ask for more details, but he seemed to guess what she was talking about before he had to; any lycans that might have been seen her fight with a sword wouldn't have lived to talk about it afterwards.

It wasn't that she'd been deadlier with that weapon than she was with her now-favoured Berettas, but it had certainly been easier to really let rip without worrying about collateral damage in the days when the world had been smaller, particularly when so few lycans had managed to master the skill of transforming without the aid of the moon back when…

"Why do you hate them so much?" Michael asked.

"I've already told you; we're at war," Selene said; she didn't want to talk about this…

"So you're just following orders?" Michael asked, clearly sceptical at that idea. "Why can't you just answer the question?"

If it had been anyone else, Selene would have remained silent, but something about Michael made her want to actually think about giving him the answer he was looking for…

"Fine," Michael said, clearly having given up on getting an answer.

"Something was in the stables, tearing our horses to pieces," she said, staring out of the window; it was easier not to look at him when she was lost in these memories. "I couldn't have saved my mother. Or my sister. Their screams woke me. My father died outside, trying to fend them off. I stood at my door, about to run to my nieces' room when…"

She broke off her story for a moment; even after so many centuries, the memory of those agonising screams for 'Auntie Selene' still hurt. "Twin girls, barely six years old… butchered like animals…"

"Jesus," Michael said, looking sympathetically at her.

"The next thing I knew, I was in his arms," she continued. "The war had spilled into our house; he'd been tracking the Lycans for days. He drove them off and saved me."

"Who?" Michael asked.

"Viktor," Selene replied. "The oldest and strongest of us. That night, he made me a Vampire. He gave me the strength to avenge my family. Since then, I've never looked back."

_Until now_, she thought to herself, not wanting to voice that thought as she looked back at Michael for the first time since starting her story.

It had always been so easy to see them as the monsters that had killed her family, but when she looked at Michael, a member of the lycans through mere chance, with no part in their war beyond his current biology…

"I saw your pictures," she said, trying to get the conversation to a more comfortable topic. "Who was that woman? Your wife?"

"Fiancé, actually," Michael replied, after briefly starting to look at her with a glare before he evidently decided that he had other things to worry about right now. "Her name was Samanatha. We met in our first year of college- I was studying medicine, she was doing history and philosophy; we met in a medical ethics course we were both doing- hit it off when we were assigned as partners for a research project, were engaged by the end of second year, and then…"

He sighed grimly. "The accident happened."

"Accident?" Selene asked despite herself.

"Head-on collision with a drunk driver on the motorway heading back to college after a weekend away," Michael explained. "I tried to swerve, but he hit us anyway; sent us right into the oncoming lane. When I came to, I realized that part of the engine was in the front seat… and she was pinned there, six inches from me, in this horrible position. I think she was in shock, because she just kept asking me over and over again if I was all right. She was more worried about me."

It was an irrelevant thought, but Selene suddenly found herself wondering if anyone had ever felt that way about her…

"You know, if I knew then what I know now, I could have saved her; there's no doubt in my mind about that," Michael continued. "But I was still too early in my training- we were focusing more on diagnosing the trickier things than treating the bigger ones- so instead she died right there, about two minutes before the ambulance arrived. After that, I didn't see any reason to stick around. I spent a summer here with my grandfather when I was a kid so… after I got my degree, I just… I took off. I came over here to move on, to forget. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"And have you?" Selene asked. "Moved on?"

"Have you?"

She wasn't even sure how to define her reaction to that question.

If anyone else had asked her a question like that, Selene would have brushed it off with some dismissive remark, but after everything she'd shared with Michael… she just didn't know _how _to respond.


	6. Plans for Punishment

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

As she drove back up to the mansion, far too close to sunrise for her liking but knowning she couldn't have left any sooner, Selene hoped that Viktor had recovered enough of his strength since she had woken him up to effectively give orders. Traditionally, while an Awakening took place each Elder was to be confined to their chambers for the next couple of days so that the Awakened one could rest and recuperate while sorting through their inherited memories while the Elder facing rest would begin to fast in preparation for his own sleep, but she had no way of knowing if it would take Viktor longer to recover having been fed her blood rather than the blood of another Elder, and modern technology also made it somewhat unpredictable…

Speaking of unpredictable, she hoped that Michael would take her instructions if things didn't go as well as she hoped. The safehouse would only keep Michael contained for so long- it wasn't exactly designed to trap a healthy lycan; merely provide a secure location to interrogate an injured one- but considering his youth as a lycan, a single round in a non-lethal body part should be enough to keep him in human form until she could think of something better.

It was far from a perfect solution, but it was the best that she could come up with on short notice; she'd heard rumours that some lycans used some kind of drug to keep younger lycans in human form until they had better control of their other forms, but she'd never bothered to look into those reports in depth and wouldn't have a clue where to find such a drug anyway.

There had to be _some _way to help Michael in the long-term; she just needed to convince Viktor to focus on the bigger picture…

Parking outside the mansion, she grimly walked up the steps and through the main door as though nothing untoward had happened earlier, heading through the gathered aristrocrats without acknowledgement as she headed for the Elders' chamber. She had hoped that Kraven would be too busy with his usual activities to register her return, but that hope was quashed when he came up behind her and grabbed her by the arm, dragging her into a nearby corner.

"How could you do this to me?" he said, glaring at her as though she'd somehow insulted him personally (Everything she'd done had been to try and protect the coven; the fact that it humiliated Kraven was just a nice bonus). "Embarrass me like this? The entire coven knows that I had plans for us!"

"There is no us!" Selene countered, glaring at Kraven in frustration. She sometimes wondered if Kraven had been snacking on blood from drug addicts or something pathetic like that; it was the only explanation for his continued inability to accept reality.

"You'll go before Viktor and tell him exactly what I tell you to!" Kraven said firmly, tightening his grip on her wrist as he glared at her. "From here on out, you'll do as I say. Is that in any way unclear?"

In response, Selene simply rammed the palm of her hand into his face, dropping him to his knees as he clutched at his aching nose while she walked past him. She had no idea why Kraven thought she'd suddenly start listening to him now, but she had more important things to worry about than Kraven's bruised ego; right now, her and Michael's lives depended on her convincing Viktor of what she had discovered. Walking as briskly as she could, she made her way downstairs, opened the door of the chamber, and then hurried inside, smiling in relief both as the door closed behind her and at the sight of Viktor sitting in the throne at the other end of the room.

"Come closer, my child," Viktor's voice said, prompting her to stand up despite her initial deference to him by kneeling.

Her sire was still far from the picture of health, his skin grey and withered from his century of slumber and his body still, but his voice was as clear as ever despite being soft from a century of disuse, and his eyes had the same firm stare that she had first seen when he brought her into this life.

"I've been lost without you, my lord," she admitted, allowing herself to smile as she looked at him. "Constantly hounded by Kraven and his never-ending infatuation…"

"It is the oldest story in the book," Viktor noted, with that same warm smile she seemed to be the only member of the Coven to see. "He desires the one thing he cannot have."

That was Kraven all over as far as Selene was concerned; constantly chasing after things he'd never get and incapable of recognising the shortcomings that would prevent him achieving his dreams.

"Now," Viktor said, his tone becoming grimmer as he studied her, their initial moment of bonding clearly over, "tell me, why have you come to believe that Raze still lives?"

Selene supposed that she should have expected this- she'd known when she came up with this plan that Viktor would only receive so much of her memories and discoveries when he received her memories- but she'd hoped that he would have picked up enough to know the answer to _that_…

"But I've given you all the proof you need!" she protested.

"Incoherent thoughts and images, nothing more," Viktor said dismissively, his tone colder than it had been. "Which is precisely why the Awakening is performed by an elder; you do not possess the necessary skills."

"But I _did _see Raze!" Selene protested. "I shot him! You _must _believe me!"

"The chain has never been broken," Viktor said coldly, speaking as though she was a disobedient student who needed to be reminded of the rules. "Not once, not in fourteen centuries, not since we Elders first began to leapfrog through time. One awake, two asleep, that is the way of it; it is _Marcus_' turn to reign, not mine!"

"But I had no choice!" Selene insisted. "The Coven is in danger, and Michael is the key-!"

"Yes…" Viktor said, an edge of familiar contempt to his voice as he spat at that word, even if she had never heard it directed at her. "The lycan…"

Selene suddenly hated the way Viktor said that word; she had always sought vengeance for the loss of her family, but Michael hadn't even transformed for the first time and Viktor was already defining him by what he was to become.

"Please," she said, not wanting to analyse that thought too closely, "give me the chance to get the proof you require."

"I will leave it to Kraven to collect the proof, if there is any," Viktor said firmly, in a tone that couldn't have hurt Selene more if he'd actually driven a stake through her heart.

"How can you trust him over me?" Selene asked, shaken at this statement.

"Because," Viktor said, glaring coldly at her, "he is not the one who has been tainted by an animal."

It was never something that would have troubled her before, but Selene suddenly wondered if she'd ever been that fixated on her goal.

She might hate lycans just as much as Viktor, but if it came to a choice between sparing a lycan and saving a vampire, she liked to think she'd choose the second option most of the time (She'd make an exception if Kraven or Soren were the ones in danger, of course); couldn't Viktor see that this was a difficult decision for her as well?

"I love you like a daughter," Viktor continued, sounding less hostile as he studied her, "but you leave me with no choice. These rules are in place for a good reason, and they are the only reason we have survived this long."

With that statement, he sat back slightly in his throne once again, the moment of compassion over. "You will not be shown an ounce of leniency. When Amelia arrives, the Council will convene and decide your fate. You have broken the chain and the Covenant! You must be judged!"

There was nothing else that Selene could say to that statement; all she could do was collect her initial tear and hope that she could keep herself together. As Kraven's men entered the chamber to take her away, the best that she could do was to stand up and let them simply escort her to her room rather than give them the chance to grab her; she might be a prisoner officially, but she was going to retain some degree of dignity.

"You should've listened to me and stayed out of this," Kraven said, his tone as mocking as always. "Now you'll be lucky if I can convince the Council to spare your life."

"Tell me," Selene said, deciding to indulge her curiosity and confirm her theory, "did you have the nerve to cut the skin from his arm, or did Raze do it for you?"

The awkward expression on Kraven's face at that question was all the answer she needed.

It wouldn't do her any good at the moment, of course- it was only her and Kraven's men here right now, and none of them would ever testify against him even if they believed her story- but it was enough for her to know that she was right.

"Mark my words," Kraven said, acting as though she hadn't even spoken, "soon you'll be seeing things my way."

As the door was closed and locked from the outside, Selene pulled her curtains shut and settled down on her bed; with sunrise soon, and no immediate way out of this situation, the best thing she could do for herself and Michael was rest and think about her next move.

* * *

"How is it?" Sonja asked, looking curiously at Singe as he walked back into the underground lab, a grim expression on his face.

"The vampire Selene returned to the mansion, but she didn't have Michael with her," her chief scientist replied. "I am working on retracting her movements, but we only have so many taps that we can use…"

"Give it time," Sonja said with a thoughtful smile. "We have a couple of days to go before we need him, and Amelia's group is arriving tonight; Selene will want to make sure that Michael's safe, so all we have to do is keep an eye on her activities and follow her to wherever she stashed Michael."

"Talking of Amelia, are you sure that we don't need to be worried about her?" Raze asked curiously. "Confronting an active Elder is dangerous enough-"

"If we strike at the right time, we can catch her and Marcus at their weakest," Sonja interjected. "You and I both know that the transition from one Elder to another is when both are most vulnerable; if we attack tomorrow, Amelia will be fasting and Marcus will still be regaining his strength."

"And if we can recover Michael's blood, we won't even need to worry about that," Singe added with a grin. "If these hybrids prove as powerful as we believe, the results will be _very _interesting…"

"Just remember to keep things quiet," Sonja said. "The vampires are on high alert already; we can't afford to give them any reason to pay more attention to lycan activities in this city."

It was a complicated plan, but if it took too long to find Michael, she would just have to arrange for an attack on the mansion and hope for the best; two weakened Elders were only slightly less dangerous than one at full strength, but she would never have a better chance.

Her only regret was that her father wouldn't be the active Elder at the time of her attack; she would derive _great _satisfaction from watching him perish in full awareness of who had killed him and why they had done so…


	7. Breaking Out

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

The following morning, Selene was still stuck for options as to how she could get out of this mess. If she attempted to break out of her room, she could almost certainly make it to mansion's fence without being caught, but she would never have the time to get to her Jaguar before the guards found her, and trying to get out of here without a car would only buy her a few minutes before someone managed to catch up with her; vampires were fast, but they couldn't outrun a speeding car. If she could arrange a distraction somehow, she might be able to take advantage of the opportunity and get to the Jaguar while everyone was attending to something on the other side, but that would still leave her without weapons, and there was no way that she could make contact with anyone outside this room who'd willingly help her…

Kraven would just find the proof he 'needed' to find to prove his claims, and Viktor would accept it due to his own prejudice against lycans; as much as she hated to admit it, she wasn't going to get anywhere if she relied on Viktor to resolve this in her favour after she'd brought up Michael.

She was completely _stuck_…

Hearing alarms blaring outside, Selene sat up sharply, staring around herself in confusion. She didn't know what could be causing that sound, but if she could determine where it was coming from, she might be able to work out how to escape…

Erika suddenly entered the room, tossing her a new set of Berettas with a firm expression.

"Why are you helping me?" Selene asked.

"I'm not," Erika replied bluntly. "I'm helping me."

The serving-girl's motives might be questionable, but Selene didn't have the time to worry about the precise details; she had a chance to save Michael, and that was what really mattered right now.

Nodding briefly at Erika, she turned for the room's window, opened it, and dived out of the mansion, hitting the ground and running towards the place where she had left her Jaguar; everyone must have concluded that it wasn't a significant enough obstacle to be worth moving. Diving into the car, Selene turned on the engine and charged out of the mansion, acting virtually on instinct as she started driving towards the city and the building where she'd left Michael.

So long as he remained inside the safehouse, he might not have transformed yet- most lycans required direct moonlight to trigger the first transformation before midnight- but if she didn't get there in time, Michael _would _change…

* * *

Even pushing her car to its design limits, Selene still felt like she'd taken far too long to reach her destination as she finally arrived at the safehouse. As she parked the Jaguar, Selene practically leapt out of the car to charge up the stairs, but she had only reached the third floor landing before the doors opened below her.

She barely needed to glance down to confirm that it was lycans; they were far too casually dressed to be vampires even if the scent didn't give it away. Picking up the pace, she dived into the room where she'd left Michael, not particularly surprised to find him still trapped in the chair and with the gun off in another corner of the room; she supposed that asking someone to shoot themselves was a bit much for anyone to deal with when using a gun for the first time.

"We have to go," she said, quickly undoing the handcuffs and helping Michael to his feet, before something slammed into the door behind her. Stuck for anything else to do, Selene pulled out her guns and fired a few quick rounds at the door.

"Get to the window and jump!" she yelled, looking anxiously at Michael before turning her attention back to the attacking lycans. Hearing Michael scrambling to open the window, Selene turned her attention to the breaking door in front of her, firing her Berettas at any point where someone was trying to break through from the other side. The lycans tried to fire back through the door, but it was all too easy for Selene to evade their shots; the sheer number of lycans outside the room made it harder for her to miss then it was for them.

The sound of a car screeching past outside prompted Selene to turn back and glance out the window, cursing as she saw Michael being forced into what looked like a police car by two men.

Not only did she doubt that the police were that interested in talking with Michael about the station shooting that had first brought him to her attention, but considering the timing and the impossibility of them just happening to find him, if those two weren't lycans she'd literally eat her guns…

Unable to pursue Michael at the moment, Selene re-doubled her efforts to end this fight, continuing to fire her guns until the gunfire from outside the room finally came to a halt. Firing a few final bullets to limit the possibility that someone was lying in wait, Selene put her guns back in their holsters and left the room, taking in the assembled lycans lying in front of the door; the car that had taken Michael was too far away by now for her to catch up with it no matter how quickly she made it to the ground, but one of her would-be attackers might be able to offer her a clue of some sort. Most of them were what she'd come to expect from centuries of war- obviously strong even before being turned but also comparatively thuggish- but she quickly noted the odd one out; a small man at the bad of the group, a pair of shattered glasses lying beside him, still bleeding from bullets in his shoulders… and he was still breathing.

"Well, well," Selene said, crouching down to examine the last survivor of this latest skirmish, smirking slightly as he stared anxiously up at her. "Why do I have the feeling that you have a great deal to tell me?"

As the lycan looked up at her with obvious fear on his face, Selene spared a moment to wonder what someone like this was doing with the lycans- he was clearly more of an intellectual than their usual focus on raw power- but she was sure she'd find out more with a bit of patience…

* * *

Sitting patiently in the underground laboratory, Sonja stared at the patchwork Corvinus family tree with a thoughtful smile.

It had taken them so long to find the right match, but now they would only have to wait a short while before Singe was back here with Michael Corvin, and then…

Despite her usual serious mood, Sonja smiled at the thought.

With Amelia fasting in preparation for her centuries of sleep tomorrow morning, combined with Marcus's own weakened condition, it wouldn't be that difficult for the lycans to mount their attack. The mansion was so isolated that the mortals wouldn't be aware of the attack in time to interfere even if their presence could make a difference, and with daylight on their side it shouldn't take too long for the lycans to score another decisive victory over the complacent vampires.

A part of Sonja regretted the necessity of mounting this kind of attack against her own people, but she was already certain that it would be necessary; as long as her father's chosen were in power, her adopted people would never receive the dignity they deserved. With the full power of the vampire race in one concentrated location for the first time in a century, one concentrated attack should be all that was needed to put them down, particularly with her father still asleep and the active Elders vulnerable.

With Raze keeping an eye on things at the mansion, and Singe off to recover Michael's blood, things were bound to be _very _interesting soon…

Looking up as the entrance opened, Sonja smiled at the sight of Pierce and Taylor hauling in the unconscious Michael Corvin; judging by the slight tears in his shirt, the transformation had started while they were in transit, but they must have managed to inject him with the enzyme to suppress the change before it went too far.

"There were vampires there," Pierce said, looking apologetically at her as he and Taylor strapped Michael down to the examination table; even if Michael was biologically 'committed' to the war now, it would be best to keep him contained until she had gathered everything together. "Don't know what happened to Singe's team, but if they were aren't here by now…"

"Of course," Sonja said, nodding at Pierce in grim understanding.

Losing Singe was a loss, but she had to focus on the larger picture right now; he had given her the help she needed to put the pieces together, and once her father's people had been dealt with, her new family could finally exist in peace.

"Prepare the defences," she said, nodding at the other two lycans. "I need to get everything ready here."

The procedure to trigger her transformation should be relatively straightforward, but it would be best to get everything done as swiftly as possible just in case anything came up at the last minute; her father had condemned himself by letting his temper dictate his actions more than once, and thus been caught completely off-guard.

Once she and Raze had everything they needed, her father would _pay _for what he had done to the only man she would ever love…


	8. The Lycans' Plan

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: We start to _really _diverge from canon now; hope you enjoy the results

AN 2: I've made a couple of small changes to Chapter 2 regarding Sonja's reflections on her plans; minor details only, but I thought I should let you all know

The Vampire Leader

As she marched through the mansion, dragging her prisoner alongside her despite the shocked stares she was receiving from the other vampires, Selene was still trying to process everything that Singe had told her about his experiments; she'd only allowed herself time to question him about the essentials in order to get back to the mansion as quickly as possible, but even that was shocking.

Raze wanted to create a _hybrid_…

She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than the idea of having to face some kind of 'uber-lycan'; as powerful as it might have been, even an enhanced lycan should be fundamentally predictable in terms of what it might act like in a fight, but a hybrid would be a complete anomaly…

"…become obsessed," Selene heard Kraven saying as she approached the Elders' chambers. "She thinks that I'm at the core of some ridiculous conspiracy!"

"And here's my proof," Selene said, grateful for the chance to enter at such an opportune moment as she marched through the door and threw her prisoner to the ground in front of Kraven and a now fully-restored Viktor; he still sat in the throne, but the tubes had been removed and he now looked at least reasonably human, even if his pale skin would still attract attention.

Once Viktor saw the prisoner, it didn't take long for Selene to be provided with the necessary equipment to keep him chained in the centre of the room. She had kept an eye on Kraven as the other Death Dealers fetched the necessary manacles to prevent the prisoner from transforming- lycans might be strong, but these were too tight to allow him to transform without at least fracturing his wrists- but he tried nothing until she was ready to start interrogating him; evidently he was waiting to see how this played out.

"Now," she said, focusing on what was important as she looked at the lycan, "I want you to tell them exactly what you told me."

For a moment, the lycan simply sat in silence, but he quickly abandoned that idea when Selene gave his shoulders a warning squeeze; broken bones might heal faster than a human's would, but they still needed to be set to heal properly.

"All right, all right!" he protested anxiously, before he began to grimly tell his story. "We've been searching for someone with a special trait. A direct descendant of Alexander Corvinus, a Hungarian warlord who came to power in the early seasons of the fifth century, just in time to watch a plague ravage his village. He alone survived. Somehow, his body was able to change the disease… mould it to his benefit. He became the first true immortal… and years later, he fathered at least two children who inherited this same trait."

"The three sons of the Corvinus clan," Viktor said mockingly. "One bitten by bat, one by wolf, one to walk the lonely road of mortality as a human… it's a ridiculous legend; nothing more!"

"That may be," the lycan scientist noted, "but our species do have a common ancestor… and a mutation of the original virus is directly linked to his bloodline."

"There is a descendant of Corvinus lying there, not three feet from you!" Viktor said, indicating the panel that represented where Marcus rested (Selene made a note to look into that later; the implication that Marcus was a Corvinus descendant might be interesting to learn more about).

"Yes," the lycan noted, "but he's already a vampire. We needed a pure source, untainted… An exact duplicate of the original virus, which we learned was hidden away in the genetic code of his human descendants and passed along in its latent form… down through the ages… all the way to Michael Corvin."

The lycan paused for a moment, apparently lost in thought at the memory of something- most likely his old experiments- before he continued. "For years, we tried to combine the bloodlines… and for years we failed. It was useless. Even at the cellular level, our species seemed destined to destroy each other… until, that is, we found Michael. The Corvinus strain allows for a perfect union. A triple-celled platelet, which holds unspeakable power."

"There can be no such union," Viktor said grimly. "And to speak of it is heresy."

"We'll see," the lycan said with a new smirk. "Once Raze has injected himself with Michael's blood…"

"Raze is dead."

"According to whom?"

Spinning around to look at the door as Viktor registered the implications of the lycan's smirk, Selene's only regret at the discovery that Kraven was no longer there was the fact that she wouldn't get to punish him for his treachery directly.

"I _knew _it!" she said, unable to stop herself grinning slightly as she looked back at Viktor, her sire now staring coldly at the area where Kraven had been standing earlier. His expression cold at this new proof of his regent's treachery, Viktor stood up from the throne and walked down to join her, looking sympathetically at her once again.

"I can assure you, my child," he said solemnly. "Kraven will pay with his life."

The sound of Singe chuckling prompted a pointed glance from both Selene and Viktor, but he was spared from their reaction when the doors to the chamber opened once again and Amelia walked in, Kahn and a team of Death Dealers behind her.

"Viktor?" the female Elder said, looking at him in surprise. "Why are you awake?"

"An urgent matter has arisen, Amelia," Viktor said, inclining his head slightly in acknowledgement of his fellow Elder. "I was awoken to deal with things in your absence."

"What matter could require the attention of an Elder so promptly?" Amelia asked.

"Raze is alive, my lady," Selene explained, stepping forward to answer that question as she indicated the prisoner. "This lycan has just informed us that Kraven assisted Raze in faking his death centuries ago, with the intention of creating a hybrid of both races to mount a large-scale offensive."

"_Kraven _was involved in this?" Amelia repeated, looking sharply over at Viktor. "Your _regent _-?"

"A terrible oversight on my part," Viktor said, holding up a hand as he looked grimly at Amelia. "We shall discuss this later; for now, we must deal with more immediate concerns."

"What concerns are these?" Amelia asked, walking forward to glare at the lycan. "What is Kraven planning with your master?"

"A plot that will see this house in ruins," the lycan said with a satisfied smirk. "With Michael's blood injected into his system, all that Raze shall require is the blood of a pure-born vampire… and then…"

"Abomination," Viktor said coldly.

"Half-vampire, half-lycan, but stronger than both," the lycan said, his tone almost mocking despite his injuries.

"Is that what Kraven is to provide?" Amelia asked with a cold glare. "The vampire strain to complete your twisted merging of the bloodlines?"

"Kraven?" the lycan said, actually laughing at that assumption. "Kraven's role has never been anything more than to give us the keys to the kingdom; do you honestly believe we would trust him to get that close?"

"Then what?" Viktor said, walking over to join Amelia as he glared at the prisoner. "Where will you find a vampire willing to assist you?"

"Where she has always been," the lycan said, smirking up at the eldest vampire. "Or did you think that we merely ate her once Lucian was dead?"

Selene had never seen Viktor anything less than completely composed, but as she looked at him now, she would be willing to swear that he would have gone pale if he had been a human.

"You _lie_…" he said, reaching down to grab the lycan's throat in a tight grip, the lycan left gasping for air while trying not to scream as Viktor hauled him up as far as the chains would permit. "She died centuries ago… murdered by your-!"

"You thought we would kill her because she lost her mate and child?" the lycan said, looking mockingly at Viktor. "We did not judge her for failing to save him; we admired her for _trying_. She has been a secret to many, but the time has come-"

The lycan never had the chance to finish his sentence as Viktor plunged his fist into the prisoner's chest, the blow puncturing his chest and Viktor's hand emerging from the other side clutching the lycan's heart. As he dropped the organ, Viktor withdrew his hand and stepped back, leaving the lycan's body to fall backwards, a gaping hole in his chest as he stared vacantly up at the ceiling.

"What-?" Selene began, completely confused at the strange exchange she had just witnessed.

"It does not matter," Viktor said, looking grimly over at Selene. "All that you need to focus on is the elimination of this descendant of Corvinus, this… Michael."

If her sire had issued any other order, Selene would have tried to press the point, but right then, as Viktor and Amelia departed to prepare for battle, all that she could do was stare in silent horror at the lycan body as she considered the order she had just been given.

Kill Michael…

She didn't know what was worse; the knowledge that she already knew she wouldn't be able to obey that order, or the knowledge that she would have obeyed it so easily just a couple of days ago.

She'd spent so long trying to come up with plans to convince Viktor to spare his life as an innocent victim of this conflict, and now she was being ordered to eliminate him…

She couldn't do it.

The only question was what she could do _instead_…


	9. The Truth of the War

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

As he slowly forced his eyes open, Michael wasn't entirely surprised to find himself strapped down to a table, followed by him taking in the rest of his surroundings; considering everything he'd been through over the last couple of days, waking up in some kind of lab that inspired visions of those old tales of amateur surgeons trying to steal organs in ice-filled bathtubs was almost part of the course…

"You've been given an enzyme to stop the change," a female voice explained. "It may take a little time for the grogginess to dissipate."

Looking up, Michael blinked rapidly to try and focus for a moment, until his vision cleared enough to identify the speaker as a tall woman with dark hair, dressed in dark leather with her back to him.

"Selene?" he said, briefly confused at the sight, before the woman turned to face him directly and he realised she wasn't the vampire he'd been getting to know; her haircut had a more haphazard manner about it, as though she often had to trim it herself rather than spare time to get it done professionally, and her face was slightly narrower, to say nothing of having a very distinctive scar on one side.

"Close," she said, smiling slightly at Michael as he took in her attire of rough leather jacket and trousers over a small tube top that seemed to barely conceal her breasts; where Selene looked like some hard-hitting spy, this woman put him more in mind of a punk biker chick who got by on the streets. "Selene's actually my sister."

"Sister?" Michael repeated in confusion. "She said that her sister died-"

"I should have specified that she's my _adopted _sister, and that only indirectly," the woman explained, still smiling at Michael in an unusually warm manner for the current situation. "My father turned her as a substitute for me after my presumed death; I'm aware of her by reputation, but she and I have never met."

"Your father…" Michael repeated, shaking his head in confusion before he re-focused his gaze on her. "You're Viktor's daughter?"

"Selene told you about him, then?" the woman said, her smile vanishing as she assumed a more pointed glare. "Although I'm prepared to guess that he never told her about me…"

"Who are you?" Michael protested, looking at her in exasperation.

"Sonja," the woman replied, as she turned back to the cupboard she'd been examining earlier and took out a needle, sighing as she turned around once more to look at him. "I was hoping to wait until Singe got back, but he's left everything here already; I'll just have to get on with it…"

Michael didn't have a chance to ask what she was talking about before she'd jammed the needle into his arm and withdrawn the plunger, filling it with his blood. As he watched, she turned around and injected the needle into a phial behind her, smiling in approval as the mixture turned purple while she stirred it.

"Perfect," she said, looking back at him in satisfaction. "Your blood still qualifies as human until your first transformation is complete; we need a sample of the original genome if this formula is going to work."

"Formula…?" Michael repeated, before he shook his head in frustration at himself; unlike his meeting with Selene, who'd actually acted to save his life, he had no reason to believe that these people had any interest in keeping him healthy. "Why are you even _doing _this?"

"This?" Sonja repeated, now looking at him curiously. "This is simply a necessary step to end the war."

"The war?" Michael repeated, trying to focus his strength as he glared at the woman. "I had nothing to do… with your war…"

"_My_ war?" the woman said, her expression hardening. "This is not _my _war, Michael; my father started this war when he killed Lucian."

Michael was about to ask who she was talking about when he suddenly experienced another searing headache-

* * *

_He was in a forest at night, surrounded by vicious wolves walking on their hind legs, a fallen carriage nearby…_

* * *

_He was in a cage, leaning through the bars, talking to a thin man with long dark hair and a surprisingly neat beard…_

* * *

_He was being dragged towards another feral creature like the ones he'd seen in the forest…_

* * *

_He was fleeing through the corridors of an old stone fortress, surrounded by a group of other prisoners, led by the bearded man from before…_

* * *

_He was standing in a forest as a dark-haired woman came to them, bruised and bloody, the scent about her hinting at something incredible that had been lost… a vague conversation that evoked feelings of profound loss and shared grief…_

* * *

"_Lucian died to save you."_

"_Help me make his sacrifice worthwhile… help me to free his people."_

"_By fighting against your own?"_

"_When they killed the man I love for no greater crime than his birth, they destroyed any loyalty I had for them."_

"_You carried his child… you accepted him… in Lucian's name, I will fight at your side."_

* * *

As the headache faded, Michael could only stare at the woman before him as he processed what he'd just experienced.

He was almost certainly missing a few key details- he didn't quite understand how what he'd seen had led to Raze having such a strong loyalty to that 'Lucian' guy- but he understood the context, and that was enough.

"They killed him," Michael said, looking curiously at Sonja. "Lucian. That's what started the war."

Sonja simply stood in silence with her back to him, but the tension in her shoulders made it clear that she'd heard his question.

"Who was he?" Michael asked; if she hadn't told him to stop talking yet, he might as well try and find out what he'd stumbled across. "Why did Viktor want him dead?"

Finally, after another uncomfortable silence, Sonja turned around to look at him.

"Lucian was the first lycan," she explained solemnly. "The first werewolves, according to all stories, were savage animals, transformed by the bite into rampaging wolves permanently, never able to take human form again; Lucian was the offspring of two transformed werewolves, born in his human shape and transforming at the full moon. My father witnessed his birth and raised him as a servant, allowing him to turn others into lycans to act as our daylight guardians while always considering them second-class…"

Her voice trailed off, head bowed in a solemn manner, but Michael had already guessed where she was going with that statement.

"You fell in love with him?" he asked.

"He was a noble spirit condemned to slavery for no greater reason than the accident of his birth; it would have impossible _not _to love him," Sonja said, smiling at the memory before her expression faltered. "But all my father saw was me in bed with a man that he perceived as a primitive beast. When Lucian broke my father's rules to save my life, my father's only show of mercy was not killing Lucian immediately for his transgression, and when we attempted to leave the keep…"

Her expression became a cold glare as she thought back to the events she was discussing. "My father had Lucian burned to death by dropping a barrel of flaming oil right on top of him, and ten he killed my unborn child when I tried to escape."

"You were _pregnant_?" Michael said, looking at her in surprise.

"Contrary to modern popular culture, we are not the walking dead, Michael," Sonja explained, her expression actually lightening as she looked at him in amusement. "I admit that we do burn in sunlight, but we retain our reflections and are unaffected by holy artefacts; we are unusual creatures of nature, but everything about us can be explained through scientific methods."

Her smile once again vanished as she glared downwards. "But all my father saw when he looked at Lucian was a beast that would never be more than a talking version of the animals he had created the Death Dealers to oppose… and he vowed to destroy them as animals when they showed me far more compassion than my own kind when I chose to love Lucian, even when I had spent over a century acting in the defence of the Council when all I had done for the lycans was treat one of them like he could be more than an animal."

Michael had no idea what to say to that. It had all seemed so simple when Selene had told him about her own history- the vampires were trying to abstain from human blood and the werewolves were tearing innocent families to pieces for a snack- but then Sonja had told him all this and he was left with the revelation that the vampires had pretty much _provoked _the war in the first place…

"My father started this war when he killed the finest and noblest lycan I have ever known, Michael," Sonja said, as she looked solemnly at him while holding up the syringe with his blood in it. "And with your blood, I shall unleash a power that will end his reign for good."

Looking at the almost fanatic gleam in her eyes, Michael suddenly had no idea how he should feel about that plan.

Maybe the lycans deserved some payback for being treated like second-class citizens, but, no matter what she'd done to him since the confrontation in his apartment, he knew he couldn't let them harm Selene…


	10. Shocking Truths

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

When she was informed that she had company, Sonja had been expecting that she wouldn't enjoy the news that the new arrivals had to offer, but when she arrived in the 'visitors' wing' of their subterranean headquarters- the closest thing they had to a private location in this open labyrinth- she certainly hadn't been expecting to find Kraven there, looking at in frustrated indignation with a small group of his loyal private security team standing around him.

Kraven might be arrogant, but even the regent's infamous arrogance wouldn't prompt him to come all the way down here unless something was _seriously _wrong.

"I want to speak with Raze-" Kraven began.

"Raze is currently absent," Sonja said, looking firmly at him, grateful that she'd taken a moment to grab a lycan's coat; Kraven might be a poor warrior, but with her currently obligated to take point while Raze was occupied preparing for tomorrow night's assault, even this idiot would notice if she didn't smell like a lycan in these close quarters. "What are you doing here?"

"Viktor's awake," Kraven spat.

Only centuries of training allowed Sonja to contain her fear at that thought.

She had anticipated that she would have to kill her father- she had lost all interest in keeping him alive after he killed her unborn child and the man she loved because of nothing but his own prejudices- but she hadn't anticipated the idea that she would have to _fight _him directly. She and Raze had barely survived the first confrontation with her father because they'd had the advantage of sunlight, Raze fighting her father directly while she kept him out of the shadows and weakened him even further, and daylight was now several hours away.

If the vampires knew that there was a lycan stronghold here, Amelia and Viktor would almost certainly lead the assault, which meant that they were about to face two Elders…

There was nothing else for it; she would have to adjust her plans.

"Escort our guests downstairs," she said, glancing over at one of her men before she focused her gaze on Kraven. "And _you _are just going to stay where you are until we have dealt with this mess."

"How do you expect me to assume control now that Viktor's awake?" Kraven said, glaring at her as the lycans escorted the other vampires out of the room. "There's no defeating him; he grows stronger as we speak."

"Which is why we needed Michael," Sonja said with a slight smile. "If Viktor was so easy to dispatch, you would have done it yourself centuries ago."

She stared at Kraven for a moment, before she turned and left the room.

"Wait here," she said, before she walked through the door; if Viktor was going to be here soon, she'd need to be prepared for the upcoming battle, and she had no interest in dealing with Kraven's crap before them.

She could get the first ingredient for her plan easily enough; to limit the risk of the wrong person learning her secret this close to the final hurdle, she just had to hope that her father was slow enough and Raze was fast enough for her lycan partner to get back here in time to provide the second…

* * *

As she walked through the sewers towards the lycan stronghold, Selene had never felt so conflicted about a hunt.

She was targeting the stronghold of the lycan leader, about to score the biggest victory in her quest for revenge against her family, working alongside Amelia for the first time in centuries- she'd gone on the occasional hunt with Amelia shortly after she was turned and been impressed by the Elder's professional manner, but in recent times Amelia had assumed a more business-like role as lycan numbers 'died out' and the Death Dealers had been reduced to what amounted to clean-up duty- and all she could think of was the fact that she didn't want to kill one new lycan.

Even the honour of going into battle alongside two Elders couldn't help her get over the thought; Michael was only in this whole mess because he was unlucky enough to be descended from a particular family, and now she was going to kill him for something that he had no control over (She could at least be fairly sure that the other lycans she'd killed had made a choice to participate in their war). She was already making some fragile plans to try and smuggle Michael out of the base before any of the other Death Dealers found him; if she could just eliminate Raze and Kraven, she might be able to pass off another lycan's body as Michael's and give him a chance to get to an old safehouse while she worked something else out…

As though she needed more reasons to hate Kraven, the fact that he'd put her into this situation was certainly one of them; if she'd just been able to get sufficient Death Dealers down here when she first found out about this facility, Michael wouldn't have been bitten, Marcus could have been awoken on schedule, and she wouldn't have to deal with this mess.

When the team reached the open concrete shaft leading down to the lycan stronghold, the first Death Dealers tossed a couple of grenades down the hatch, prompting a scream of agony as the first wave of werewolves were taken down by the explosive blast. With the hatch open to them, the Death Dealers leapt down and began to fire at the approaching lycans, cutting them down with ease. As she hurried down after them, Selene stuck behind her allies as closely as possible, watching the two Elders at work while waiting for her chance to make her move.

It almost felt like an additional betrayal, but she had to confess that she was actually impressed by Amelia's professional approach; Viktor always seemed to need to inflict extra damage to the lycan corpses, but Amelia just did the job and moved on, eliminating them without taking excess pleasure in it…

Before she could experience any more self-doubt about her planned course of action, she turned around and dived down a different corridor, away from the immediate wave of lycans; she had enough going on without starting to question her sire's previously-admirable hatred of lycans.

If Khan, Viktor or Amelia caught her, she'd say that she was looking for Kraven or Michael and insist that she be left alone to continue the hunt; she had enough of a reputation that nobody below those three should feel right questioning her about what she was doing, and most of her fellows would be more interested in seeing a pair of Elders in action.

As she hurried through the tunnels, she kept her eyes out for any other lycans, managing to easily evade a couple of lycans still in their human form as they hurried towards the main battle.

She didn't like leaving enemies alive, but she had to have faith that her fellow Death Dealers could deal with that; Michael was too new to this conflict to last in a fight even if he wasn't probably being held captive right now.

She found herself face-to-face with a third lycan as she came around a corner, but she was able to lead it back into the corridor she'd just left and leap over the lycan as it charged towards her, shooting it in the back of the head while it was distracted before hitting the ground and continuing her search.

As she approached an area that seemed to be the centre of this complex network she'd found herself in, she paused as she heard someone talking a short distance away.

"…intended to make Raze the only hybrid," a female voice said, with a strange tone of authority behind it; female lycans weren't unheard of, but this one sounded like she was in a position of authority that even Selene had never heard of. "However, with the addition of Viktor to the equation, I'm going to have to change my plans."

"Your plans?" another voice responded that Selene recognised as Michael; he sounded tired and frustrated, but it didn't sound like the lycans had done anything to him that he couldn't recover from. "What does all this have to do with me?"

"The plan was to create a hybrid warrior using your blood as the catalyst," the female voice explained, sounds reaching Selene's ears as she followed the voices suggesting that the woman was searching for something. "It would have just been Raze, but if Viktor's here… well, I want _that _pleasure all to myself."

Having heard enough, Selene spun around the corner and fired through the plastic curtain hanging between her and the speaker, aiming for the standing figure; she doubted that the lycans would allow Michael to be in a position where he could walk away. Entering the room, she smiled at the sight of Michael strapped to a table, covered in sweat and obviously shaken but otherwise unhurt, but she was given other matters to think about when the female figure she'd just shot stood up and pinned her to the wall with one hand.

It was only when she looked at the woman's eyes and saw blue rather than black that she realised what she was looking at.

"You're a _vampire_?" she said incredulously.

Kraven's treachery was one thing, but the idea that lycans would allow a vampire to wander around inside their compound with no sign of guards, and no evidence that the woman before her had been forced to escape from any guards…

"Correct," the woman said, digging into her shoulder with her free hand to pull out the bullet that Selene had just fired at her; the silver would have burned a lycan, but on a vampire it was nothing more than another bit of metal in an inconvenient place. "Selene, I've been watching you for a while; it's a pleasure to meet you at last."

"Who are you?" Selene said, ignoring the implications of that last statement. "Why would you betray your own species?"

"For the same reason you came this far into my facility on your own," the traitor said, smiling as she indicated Michael. "The love of a lycan."

It was a credit to the impact that Michael had had on her so far that Selene didn't immediately start to protest at that statement. She might not yet be sure what she felt for Michael, but she already knew that she was willing to go to significant lengths to ensure his safety; even if this wasn't _love_, it was something so close to it that the difference was unimportant.

"How?" she asked, looking at the woman in confusion. "We've been at war with them for centuries-?"

"But I was there when it started, Selene," the woman said, smiling slightly at the woman as she stood up, the wound in her shoulder already healing. "I was there when the lycans were our servants, kept down for no other reason than their ignoble beginnings… and I was there when my father had the man I loved killed for no crime beyond daring to love me."

"Your father?" Selene repeated, before she suddenly remembered Singe's final conversation.

Everything he'd said to Viktor, asking if he thought the lycans had just eaten 'her' once 'Lucian' was dead… reference to 'her mate and child'… talking about her in the same context as the lycans having a vampire willing to assist them…

"Who are you?" she asked at last.

"My name is Sonja," the woman said, looking at Selene with the same slight smile, before her expression darkened. "And Viktor is my father."


	11. Retreat

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

Michael had known that Selene would be shocked when she learned who Sonja was, but he hadn't pictured that her first response would be anger.

"LIAR!" Selene yelled, looking at the other vampire in outrage. "Viktor's daughter _died_-!"

"He preferred to _believe _that I was dead," Sonja countered grimly, reaching up to touch the scar on her face. "I had betrayed every single twisted belief in his own purity… and for that, he turned against me, attempted to execute my lover, and killed my child before I had time to consider how I would enjoy being a mother."

"I think… she's telling the truth, Selene," Michael said, looking awkwardly at her. "I mean, I'm still getting the hang of this whole… inheriting memory thing… but I'm remembering some stuff from Raze about him meeting with Sonja after he was turned… and there was definitely _someone _called 'Lucian' involved…"

Selene looked at him in a very probing manner for a few moments, but she finally nodded in acknowledgement of Michael's conviction before turning back to Sonja.

"What happened?" she asked. "I assume this was before the war-?"

"Our relationship provoked the war after Lucian committed the 'crime' of disobeying an unjust law to save my life, and Viktor considered himself merciful because he had Lucian whipped in public _before _he planned to execute him," Sonja spat scornfully. "He had been raised in the palace for centuries, slain so many werewolves when they got past our defences when he could have helped them in their assault, never done a _thing _to suggest that he resented our treatment of him… and yet my father was still planning to kill him when he removed a silver collar that prevented him from transforming because he needed the wolf's strength to save me."

A quick glance at Selene confirmed that she had nothing to say in response to that statement, which at least assured Michael that she wasn't as cold as she'd initially appeared; if she had continued to argue with Sonja after hearing that story, he would have _really _questioned his feelings for her.

"Viktor declared a blood feud against the lycans for what Lucian 'did' to me, but I have never ordered my lycans to do anything that wasn't necessary to survive; after that first attack on Viktor's fortress, we only started fighting back because we had to," Sonja said, looking firmly at Selene. "I can respect your loyalty to our kind, but all I want is to see my father punished for what he did to my lover and my child; after that, the vampires are free to do what they want so long as they leave the lycans alone."

As the two women stared at each other in silence, Michael, free to look at them both rather than focusing on the speaker, was once again struck by the similarity between them; give them both similar haircuts and take away Sonja's scar, and they could have easily passed for biological sisters, instead of just unofficially adopted siblings…

"I don't… _entirely_ believe you," Selene said, looking grimly at Sonja before she glanced over at Michael. "But… if you will help me get Michael out of here without being caught… I'll consider hearing you out."

"I'll take that," Sonja conceded, smiling at her before a blade emerged from her sleeve, which she used to effortlessly cut Michael's straps. The medical intern stumbled slightly as he stepped down from the bench that had been keeping him up, but he quickly regained his balance.

"Take this," Selene said, quickly handing him a spare Beretta. "We'll try and stay hidden, but if anything does find us…"

"Gotcha," Michael said, looking uncertainly at the weapon even as his grim nod made it clear that he understood. "Silver bullets, huh?"

"They're still effective against anything we'll find down here," Selene said, before she looked anxiously at him. "Just…"

"I'll try not to shoot anyone anywhere serious," Michael assured her, looking over at Sonja to make it clear that he was taking her into account as well; going into a warzone and agreeing not to kill either side might be stupid, but he'd do what he had to do. The only sign of thanks she gave him was a brief nod of gratitude, but that was enough for Michael at the moment; he'd seen enough of both women to guess that they weren't that expressive.

"I'll lead the way," Sonja said, looking at the other two. "In this situation, my lycan forces are more likely to attack first and think later when they see Selene; we'll need to take some of the back routes to get to the exit."

"You have back routes?" Michael said in surprise.

"Some of our forces need more time to adjust to things; it seemed practical to include a secret way out in case some people… didn't react well," Sonja said, shrugging defensively as Selene glared at her. "We were trying to give the Death Dealers the impression that the lycans were going extinct; I couldn't afford to be lax in my security measures."

Selene simply nodded in grim understanding. Even with his limited military experience, Michael was surprised that Sonja was sharing something like that with Selene, but on reflection it wasn't exactly something she needed to keep secret right now.

"What about you?" Michael asked, uncertain what prompted his concern but needing to ask the question anyway. "I mean, if anyone finds that you're doing this-?"

"Raze and the inner circle have allowed me to guide their plans for centuries simply because I was Lucian's lover; I think I've earned enough credibility over the years so that they won't turn on me for this," Sonja replied. "Besides, Raze is meant to be coming back this way; I need to meet with him before this is all over."

"Why?" Selene asked.

"Because of this," Sonja explained, pausing as she turned to Selene and pulled out a small syringe, smiling slightly as she studied its contents. "This is one of the two samples we've taken from Mr Corvin here."

"Me?" Michael said, looking at Sonja in confusion. "Y'know, you've never actually explained that; why am _I _so important to all this?"

"You're the last known mortal descendant of Alexander Corvinus, the father of the vampires and the lycans," Sonja explained, smiling slightly at Michael. "As a result, your blood contains the genetic potential to combine both bloodlines into one being."

Michael blinked.

"What?" he said, hating the stupidity of the statement but lost for anything else that he could say to that kind of revelation. "You mean… my blood… can make someone a vampire _and _a werewolf?"

"A hybrid," Selene confirmed, looking grimly at Michael. "A lycan scientist explained it all to me; your blood contains a unique genetic code that allows for the creation of a triple-celled platelet combining the best elements of both of us into one entity."

"Whoa…" Michael said, shaking his head in awe as he looked at his arm, as though trying to see the power he'd just been told dwelled in his veins. Selene noticed Sonja looking at her in a very critical manner, but to her relief, the other vampire didn't ask questions about what had happened to Singe; Selene wouldn't apologise for it and Sonja clearly knew better than to provoke further confrontation.

The sound of conflict down another corridor prompted the small group to take a detour down another path, Selene and Sonja on either side of Michael with their weapons drawn, anxiously assessing the crossroads up ahead. After a moment's contemplation, Sonja turned to walk down the corridor to the left, only to be brought up short by a sword against her throat.

"Well well," a familiar female voice said, with a distinctive Hungarian accent. "A female lycan? I thought your kind were all about muscle these days…"

The voice trailed off as the speaker emerged from the shadows to stand in front of the small group, her eyes widening as she took in her target. "Sonja?"

"Hello, Aunt Amelia," Sonja replied, a sarcastic edge to her voice as she looked at the female Elder. "Did you miss me?"


	12. An Unanticipated Reunion

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Thanks to everyone who voiced their appreciation of my decision to save Amelia; some suggestions regarding her possible reaction to the truth about Sonja inspired this chapter

The Vampire Leader

"You- you're _alive_?" Amelia said, staring incredulously at Sonja. "But… Viktor said that you'd been eaten-!"

"I'm sure he believed that," Sonja said, looking coldly at the Elder. "Tell me, 'Aunt Amy', would it change anything if I told you that I was _actually _nearly killed by my _dear _father because he disapproved of my choice in lovers?"

"Your choice in lovers?" Amelia repeated, incredulity replaced by confusion. "Who-?"

"Lucian," Sonja said, taking a moment to smile at Amelia's obvious shock at that news before she continued. "I'm not going to lie and say that all lycans are just noble, misunderstood beasts, but I _am _going to tell you that they're not all as bad as my father would have you believe. Even after Lucian died saving my life, the other lycans never blamed me for his loss, but gave me a home and sanctuary from the coven that had tried to kill me just because I was pregnant with a lycan's child…"

"You were _pregnant_?" Amelia said, staring at Sonja in shock. "Where-?"

"The child died in my womb when my father struck me," Sonja said grimly.

"What?" Selene and Amelia said simultaneously, Michael only watching in silence; he'd had vague memories of that particular detail from what he recalled of Raze's experience, so it was less of a shock to him than it was for the two vampires.

"You were _pregnant_?" Amelia asked, staring at her in shock.

"Your child was killed?" Selene said, looking at Sonja in new sympathy. "You mentioned a dead child, but I thought…"

"You thought that it had just died of genetic defects," Sonja said, nodding in understanding before she turned back to Amelia. "The point is, my father killed Lucian and tried to kill me all because he didn't approve of my choice of partner even though Lucian had done _nothing _but aid us in defending ourselves from the werewolves."

"There's a difference?" Michael asked, looking at Sonja in surprise.

"'Werewolf' refers to the original werewolves who were incapable of returning to human form and lost most of their reason and intellect after infection; Lucian was the first lycan, who was born from a mated pair of werewolves and trained as a servant since birth."

"He was?" Selene said, looking at Sonja in surprise. "I never knew that."

"The true origin of the lycans was kept secret after the destruction of the Elders' first fortress; my father preferred to encourage the idea of them as feral monsters," Sonja said, before she looked back at Amelia. "The point is, Viktor started this war based on deception and his own prejudices; all he wanted was to vent his anger for me choosing a partner he didn't approve of, and he chose to destroy my lover's race in response."

For a moment, the two elder vampires were engaged in a grim stand-off as Amelia looked thoughtfully at Sonja, Selene and Michael watching in apprehensive silence, until the Elder lowered her weapon.

"I will… talk with Viktor about this," Amelia said, looking solemnly at her fellow two vampires before her gaze settled on Michael. "As for you-"

"He comes with us," Selene said resolutely, moving to stand between Michael and Amelia. "He has done nothing more than be bitten by a lycan; I will not allow him to be killed for that."

Amelia's only response to that declaration was a subtle smile before she turned and walked off down the corridor, followed closely by the others. With the Elder leading the way, the two vampires were able to relax slightly- Amelia was powerful enough to deal with virtually anything they might encounter here, and she would have attacked them already if she was going to- but Michael still felt slightly anxious; lycan instinct was a hard thing to shake, and an Elder was a natural predator by any definition…

As they opened a door to another corridor, the three vampires and one lycan found themselves facing a male vampire with dark hair wearing a silk shirt and smart trousers that clearly didn't fit the current situation. As his gaze focused on Selene and Michael, the vampire pulled out a gun to point it at the lycan, but Amelia moved forward to grab him by the wrist and force it and his gun upwards before he could fire it.

"Under any other circumstances, if you wanted to kill a lycan, I would be right behind you, _regent_," Amelia said, glaring scathingly at the male vampire. "However, Michael Corvin had no part in this war before last night, and I've seen enough to want answers about recent events from Viktor before I will allow him to be shot."

"Help-!" Kraven began, looking desperately at Sonja.

"You exhausted your use to me a while ago," Sonja said, shaking her head at Kraven in a dismissive manner. "And quite frankly, you were mainly just useful at diverting attention while I prepared my own forces down here; you never really _did _anything yourself."

"Right now," Selene said, stepping forward to glare at the now-immobilised vampire, "you only live because Viktor will want to choke the life from you himself."

"Really?" Kraven said, chuckling grimly as he looked at Selene. "I guess… you haven't heard…. the truth about your dark father?"

"What truth?" Sonja asked, looking coldly at the traitorous vampire; she wasn't going to mention her own history with Viktor to this man, but she was interested to hear what Kraven thought would change Selene's opinion on Viktor that quickly…

"That _he _killed her family," Kraven spat.

"_What_?" Michael and Selene said, looking at Kraven in shock.

"He never could follow his own rules; said he couldn't abide the taste of livestock," Kraven explained, a mocking grin on his face as he stared at Selene. "So every once in a while, he went out and gorged himself on human blood; I kept his secrets, cleaned up the mess. He was the one who crept room to room, dispatching everyone close to your heart… but when he got to you, he just couldn't bear the thought of draining you dry, when you reminded him so much of his precious Sonja, the daughter he condemned to death."

"Oh my God…" Sonja said, looking at Selene with a new sense of horror.

She'd known that her father's ego was considerable, but the idea that he'd ignored his own rules just to satisfy his urges…

She'd spent some time hoping that Viktor still had a degree of honour when he maintained the rules against establishing their authority over the humans, but the news that he'd gone that far proved that his former nobility was nothing more than a thing of the past, assuming it had ever existed.

"Did you know?" Selene asked, turning to glare at Amelia.

"No," the Elder confirmed, shaking her head grimly even as she kept her grip on Kraven's throat. "We always kept a degree of secrets from each other when we shared memories at the Awakening, but I never guessed he had gone _that _far…"

"So," Kraven said, looking mockingly over at Selene, "now that-"

Amelia terminated that conversation by giving Kraven's neck a sharp twist, the force of the movement so great that she actually severed the skin around his neck before he could even stop smirking. As his body fell to the floor, Amelia tossed Kraven's head to the side before she turned to look at Selene, her expression grave.

"For what Viktor has done to you, I apologise and assure you that neither Marcus or myself were ever aware of his actions," she said solemnly. "If there is ever anything I can do to atone for this sin…"

"Letting Michael live would be a good place to start," Selene said.

"I will… do what I can," Amelia said, before she looked over at Michael. "Understand, Mr Corvin, what we are being asked to do goes against centuries of tradition and conflict; I can acknowledge that _you _have never harmed one of us, but we have a very violent history with your new species that won't be easy to ignore."

"Just do what you can," Michael said, nodding at her in understanding.

"Thank you," Amelia said, before she continued walked. "Come on; I have things to say to my 'colleague'…"

They didn't have to walk for long before they turned another corner and Selene found herself face-to-face with a grim Viktor, her vampire sire's expression even colder than usual. Quickly looking behind her, she was relieved to see that Amelia was standing there, while Sonja and Michael had retreated down one of the side doors in the corridor they had just been walking along; whatever was about to happen now, she felt that it would be easier to get answers without them here.

"My child?" Viktor said, looking at Selene in surprise. "Amelia? Where is Corvin?"

"Why don't you start with answering _our _questions?" Selene asked, letting the tears she'd been fighting to restrain emerge as she glared at the man she'd considered a father for so many years. "Like how you could bear my trust after you killed my _family_?"

* * *

AN 2: For the record, I assume that Viktor kept his human 'snacks' secret from the other Elders in order to prevent Marcus from realising what Selene might be aware of, and he only learned that she might know where William's prison was after he fed from Viktor. I also presume that the other Elders avoided feeding on humans completely, albeit for different reasons; Marcus wouldn't have wanted to 'rock the boat' and give Viktor reason to threaten his position even further, and for the purpose of this story I'll assume that Amelia was more tolerant of humans than Viktor or Marcus, agreeing with keeping William contained while being relatively neutral regarding the lycans before the war, presumably acting as a buffer when all three of them were active to temper her compatriots' more extreme approaches.


	13. Family Reunion

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: In advance, I'm assuming that Marcus's appearance as a hybrid was due to him being the source of the vampire 'contagion' rather than him representing the default appearance of a vampire-dominant hybrid; Sonja may develop wings in the more distant future, but she won't be instantly capable of flight like he was, even if her strength will be considerably greater than it was as a vampire

The Vampire Leader

Hidden in a side room of the corridor that they had been walking along, Michael had no idea what he was doing. Just last night, he'd been a regular medical student, and now he was a newly-turned werewolf hiding from the guy who was probably the closest thing to a real-life Count Dracula, with the vampire's rebellious adopted daughter his best hope at staying alive.

Oh, and his blood was apparently the key to creating a vampire/werewolf hybrid of some sort; now _that _was a freaky thing to think about…

Torn between straining his ears to hear Selene's confrontation with Viktor and trying to pay attention to what was happening around him, he almost missed the sound of someone coming towards the door from the other end, but heard it in time to turn and raise the gun Selene had given him to point it at the opening door. As the door opened, it revealed the large black man who'd originally bitten him standing grimly there; it had been a while, but he wasn't going to forget Raze in a hurry.

"You?" Raze said, looking curiously at Michael before he turned to Sonja. "What is-?"

"Selene insisted we bring him," Sonja said, her voice low as she looked urgently at Raze. "That's not important right now; what matters is that I've injected myself with Michael Corvin's blood, but we obviously still need you if we're going to do anything about this."

"Me?" Raze said, looking shocked at the revelation as he stared at the lycans' vampire ally. "But-"

"We don't have time to try this in a less bloody manner; you've been there for me for all these centuries, and right now I need you to complete the final step," Sonja explained, reaching up to her collar and pulling it to the side to expose her throat to him. "Just make it quick and take a good bite; considering our close proximity to the source and my age, it shouldn't take long for the transformation to complete itself."

Looking at her for a moment, Raze nodded in grim acknowledgement before he leaned forward to bite down on Sonja's throat, prompting her to briefly flinch in pain before she slowly fell to the ground, leaning against the wall as her body began to twitch.

"You'll need this," Raze said, pulling out a needle and tossing it to Michael before he could move to examine Sonja.

"What-?" Michael began.

"It contains a chemical trigger that will start the change," Raze explained. "It's precisely calculated to ensure that you keep hold of your mind while you transform; if we're dealing with the Elders, we need a clear head more than a feral animal."

Under normal circumstances, Michael would have tried to protest that he wasn't any kind of fighter on his own, but after what he'd seen Selene to in particular, if she was scared of something, it was probably best to go along with the experts' approach and hope for the best.

As he plunged the needle into his arm and pressed the injector, he could only pray that this decision wouldn't come back to haunt him…

* * *

As he looked back at Selene, Viktor at least had the decency to look uncomfortable at her statement, turning around to wave his current guards away before he turned back to the two women.

"Yes, I have taken from you," he said, his tone sounding almost hurt. "But I have given so much more. Is it not a fair trade, the life I have granted you? The gift of immortality?"

"And what about your lies about Sonja?" Amelia asked, looking at Viktor with a cold stare. "That girl was my protégé, the closest thing I have ever had to a child of my own, and you let us all believe that she was _dead_ to further your own prejudices?"

"She _betrayed _us-!" Viktor began.

"She fell in love," Amelia corrected him. "I'm not saying that I understand her choice, but back then the _lycans_ had never actually done anything to us; you turned her against you because you couldn't see the difference between the lycans and the werewolves."

"There _is _no difference-!" Viktor began.

"Wrong."

As Viktor looking up at the door in shock, Selene and Amelia turned around themselves, staring incredulously at the sight before them.

While the figure standing in the door was clearly Sonja, she had changed significantly since the two vampires had seen her last. Not only were her muscles now far more developed under her clothes, but her eyes were completely black and her skin had turned grey, along with bat-like ears flattened around her hair and a flat nose that reminded all who saw her of a bat (Selene also noted the addition of some bloodstains on her collar, but this wasn't the time to focus on that).

"Sonja…?" Viktor said, staring her in what would have been seen as grief if it had come from anyone else.

"Hello, _Father_," Sonja said, glaring at Viktor in a firm manner as two large lycans emerged from behind her, both glaring at Viktor in the usual feral anticipation of their breed. "How have you been lately? Execute anyone else because they're not dating who you approve of?"

"What I did-" Viktor began.

"Was done because I went against _your _views; nothing more," Sonja said. "You always feared what you couldn't control-"

"You _defied _me!" Viktor spat in outrage. "You threw away everything-!"

"That _you _wanted for me in favour of what _I _wanted," Sonja corrected, before her eyes narrowed. "And don't even start on how I 'betrayed the Covenant'; most of that was drawn up _after _what I did-"

Roaring in rage, Viktor charged towards Sonja, only for Amelia to grab his arm and hurl him through a wall mid-leap.

"MOVE!" the female Elder said, looking anxiously at Sonja. "Your father isn't going to go down easily!"

Nodding in understanding, Sonja leapt through the hole in the wall after her father, Amelia and one of the lycans close behind here, leaving Selene alone in the room with Sonja's other sudden 'bodyguard'.

For a moment, as she stared at the remaining lycan now standing before her, Selene's immediate reaction was to reach for her pistols- even after Kraven's revelation and Michael's story, centuries of training and belief didn't just stop that quickly- but then she saw the creature's eyes and froze.

She might be facing a lycan, but the look in its eyes…

Even with the teeth bared in what seemed to be the lycans' perpetual snarl, the eyes showed a sense of compassion that she had never seen in any other wolf.

"Michael?" she said uncertainly, reaching out with one shaking hand almost before she realised what she was doing, centuries of training at war with her immediate instincts…

As her hand touched the lycan's snout, it almost seemed to whimper in pleasure as it nuzzled- _nuzzled_, like a conventional dog- the palm of her hand, a warmth in its eyes that she had never expected any lycan to be capable of, further dispelling the certainties that had defined her life for so many centuries.

No matter what his bloodline, if Michael was capable of being this… affectionate… so early in his life as a lycan… how many other lycans had she killed just because they'd been bitten by the wrong side and not had a chance to explain themselves?

Selene almost couldn't believe it, but she was actually _smiling _as Michael's snout rested against her palm, the smile only increasing as Michael turned to look at her directly, reaching over to lick her face experimentally like he was a giant dog.

It went against the Covenant and even most laws of humanity, but Selene almost didn't notice that Michael wasn't physically human any more… he was _Michael_, and that was all that mattered.

"It's… it's all right," she said at last, moving her hand to slightly cup Michael's jaw, finding herself lightly scratching that area before she was even aware she was doing it. "Michael… it's all right…"

She definitely wasn't prepared to… _do _anything when he was like this, but she could appreciate that Michael wasn't a monster…

The sound of guns being cocked from behind her prompted Selene to spin back around, eyes widening in horror as she saw Kahn and a group of three more Death Dealers aiming their weapons at Michael. Taking a moment to be relieved that Kahn was the only one present she knew well, Selene fired off a series of quick shots to disarm the four vampires before charging towards Kahn, knocking him to the ground as Michael howled and leapt for the other three. He might be a young lycan, but in a direct confrontation, Selene knew from experience that any vampire short of an Elder going up against a transformed lycan would come up short; the other Death Dealers must have been so shocked to see her get that close to a lycan without being torn apart that they didn't have time to react. Michael had disarmed them all with a single sweep of his paw before any of them could react, following it up with devastating kicks and punches to their chests that resulted in loud cracks from each that could only be broken ribcages.

Glancing at Khan, Selene spared a moment to be relieved that he was still alive before she punched him in the head as hard as she could, knocking him out before he could say anything. Judging by the snarls and howls coming from 'downstairs', she'd only have time to talk about what had just happened once Viktor had been dealt with; right now she had to make sure that nobody else tried to kill Amelia or her new… allies (she wasn't sure if she was ready to think of Sonja as a sister yet) before they could punish the other Elder.

* * *

AN 2: If anyone's asking why Sonja didn't offer to bite Michael, she felt that was something that Selene should offer to do, and didn't feel right depriving her 'sister' of the chance to share something that uniquely 'intimate' with Michael.


	14. An Elder Falls

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Predominately a fight scene in this chapter, but I hope you'll enjoy the result; I wanted to make sure I had it just right…

The Vampire Leader

As Sonja followed her father to the lower levels of the underground headquarters, she almost couldn't believe that the opportunity had finally come for her revenge.

After so many centuries of him persecuting her adopted species for the crimes of her past, forced to hide away as he sought the destruction of the lycans for nothing greater than Lucian falling in love with her, she finally faced her father as the embodiment of everything that he had tried to destroy, and she revelled in that power.

Her father moved with exceptional speed and power, and he'd had centuries of training since they'd last met to pick up new skills- to say nothing of whatever he 'inherited' from Amelia and Marcus when he was Awakened- but Sonja's new hybrid speed proved to be more than a match for Viktor's own talents, to say nothing of the additional tricks she'd picked up herself since the last time they fought. As he lashed out at her with stone-shattering punches, Sonja ducked and weaved out of the path of his fists before retaliating with a powerful kick of her own, leaving her father briefly winded from the impact. Slamming her hands against his ears, she grinned as her father staggered back, drawing her daggers as she prepared to attack him once again-

Her father's outraged roar was suddenly joined by Sonja's agonised scream as one hand was suddenly severed at the wrist. She was only just able to use her remaining dagger to deflect the blow that would have severed her other wrist, but the agony still overwhelmed her, prompting her to fall back into the water as she dropped her remaining dagger, unable to restrain her agonised scream.

"I regret this," Viktor said as he stood over her, the same sickening expression of sympathy on his face that had so enraged Sonja when he first displayed it while announcing Lucian's execution. "But, in the name of purity, it must be done."

As Viktor drew his sword back in preparation for a blow that could take off Sonja's head, Sonja could only stare at her severed hand as it lay before her in shock, unable to process what she'd just lost…

As Viktor brought his blade down towards Sonja's neck, his assault was interrupted when Amelia lunged forward, drawing her own blade to parry his attack. The two Elders exchanged brief snarls over their crossed blades before Viktor made a complex circular motion with his wrist that nearly cost Amelia her weapon. Despite keeping hold of her blade, the brief shift was enough to knock Amelia off-balance, allowing Viktor to go on the offensive. Forced into a defensive stance, Amelia was able to hold her own at first, her speed and slighter frame matching well against Viktor's greater power and build, but eventually a slight moment's loss of balance was enough to allow Viktor to lash out with a kick that struck her in the chest below the ribs.

As Amelia fell beside Sonja, the transformed Raze leapt towards the male Elder before he could follow up his attack on either of his fallen foes. Viktor attempted to turn to strike out at Raze, but with all his focus having been concentrated on Amelia, he was just a fraction too slow, allowing Raze to get past the point of the sword and strike at Viktor with a powerful swipe of his claws. While the two women behind Raze used the distraction to try and crawl to safety, Sonja forcing herself not to look back, Raze pressed his assault, massive claws flying as he ripped away at Viktor's chest, his leather coat soon tattered at the front and his chest so covered in blood that only his Elder-granted endurance kept him on his feet.

Further enraged at the pain in his chest, Viktor finally lashed out with a punch of his own, the incredible blow shattering Raze's nose and sending the powerful lycan flying backwards. As the wolf struck the ground a short distance away from the fallen Elder and the injured hybrid as they fought to make a retreat, Viktor turned his attention back to the two women.

As he drew his sword, he was already committed to his goal; Amelia could potentially still be talked into rejoining his cause, but Sonja's wilful corruption of her own biology had guaranteed her own destruction.

It was a tragedy to lose all that he had left of Ilona all over again, but Viktor had been correct when he assumed that the lycans had consumed his daughter after that dark night; they had just consumed the spirit of the child he had raised rather than the body.

After everything that she had done to herself, she wasn't even a vampire any more; all he was doing by killing her was preserving the memory of what she had been before Lucian corrupted her-

"NO!" a voice yelled.

Spinning around, Viktor was shocked to find Selene standing on the other side of the shallow pool that he was standing in, her weapons drawn and aimed at him, along with the shocking twist of a large lycan crouching beside her, with no sign that she was concerned about the wolf's presence.

"Leave them alone," Selene said coldly, "and deal with me."

"You would stand with _that_?" Viktor asked, staring at his youngest child incredulously as he indicated the lycan beside her; Sonja was lost to him whatever, but if he could make Selene realise what she had become-

"Michael has never lied to me, and has done his best to help me even when he had no idea what I was," Selene said solemnly, the wolf growling beside her as though in agreement. "As for what he is…"

She actually allowed herself a slightly affectionate smile as she briefly glanced in the lycan's direction. "I've seen worse."

"He is an _abomination_-!"

"The only monster here is the one that killed my family because he was peckish," Selene said, tightening her grip on her weapons as she turned her attention back to him. "You have driven our species to the brink to satisfy your own views of what we should be…"

"Everything was for the good of the coven-!"

"It was for the good of your _vision _of the coven," Selene countered. "That's not the same thing."

Viktor snarled in disgust at her defiance, but he quickly changed his tone when she raised the guns and fired, the shots striking the battered Elder in the shoulders before he could dodge. The bullets were only the Death Eaters' standard silver ammunition, with none of the ultraviolet weaponry that Viktor had witnessed in Selene's memories, but that was still enough to be a problem as they fractured his collarbones and other joints.

Before Viktor could reach up to remove the bullets, the lycan that had once been Michael Corvin charged towards him with a loud, feral roar, biting and tearing at the Elder. With his shoulders still in pain from the shots, Viktor initially couldn't raise his arms to defend himself, his agony only increasing as Michael bit down on his left shoulder and pulled. Roaring in outrage, Viktor lashed out with his other arm to strike Michael's side, prompting a nasty crunching sound as his blow shattered ribs and knocked Michael away, but the damage had been done to his arm, his left limb hanging uselessly at his side as he struggled to his feet.

Despite his agony, as the sound of a pistol being fired reached his ears, Viktor instinctively ducked once again, resulting in the bullet that Selene had just aimed at his head passing over him without causing any damage. As he stood back up, Viktor hissed in rage at Selene, smiling in satisfaction as he saw a new wave of Death Dealers hurrying down the stairs from a nearby door to join the battle; they would at least understand what he was doing…

Registering the appearance of the new wave of combatants, Selene and the lycan sprang into action, charging towards the four vampires before any of them could fire. Taken aback at the sight of Selene fighting alongside a lycan, the vampires didn't have time to react before they had been disarmed with a powerful blow of the lycan's arm, Michael smashing their weapons as Selene engaged the unarmed vampires in combat.

Satisfied that his traitorous protégé was occupied for the moment, Viktor turned his attention back to his first foes. As the lycan charged towards him once again, Viktor reached up with his working arm to grab the lycan by the threat, preparing to twist his hand in just the right manner-

His thoughts were suddenly cut short when something hard struck him in the back, leaving him frozen in his original stance as his brain fought to process the sudden agony inflicted on him.

When he glanced downwards and saw a fist sticking out of his chest, covered in blood with what looked like a chunk of his heart on the fingers, he realised that he was in far more trouble than he had expected.

"First rule of combat, father," Sonja's voice said from behind him, confirming that it was her fist currently sticking through his chest. "When you're in battle… _never _turn your back on an enemy, particularly when you don't know what they can do."

Viktor was just about to respond when his daughter reached up and tore his jaw off before he could even start to speak; a glance down through his pain confirmed that the arm through his chest was her left arm, her severed hand somehow reattached…

Then something grabbed the top of his head, pulled sharply backwards, and all Viktor knew was pain and terror as he watched his body stay standing with the lower part of its head still attached, even as he was sent flying through the air…

* * *

Staring at the pitiful remnants of her father's head still sitting on his neck, flexing her aching but healing wrist- hybrid healing might not be instantaneous, but it was exceptional; she'd just held her severed hand to her wrist and it had reattached while her father was distracted- Sonja felt a sickening sense of satisfaction at her victory.

She had promised herself that she wouldn't take any more pleasure from this than was absolutely necessary- for all his talk that it had only been business, Viktor had always taken far too much pleasure in torturing lycans even before he learned of her relationship with Lucian- but it was hard not to feel at least slightly relieved at the sight of her father's corpse.

He'd been so determined that his vision for their future would be the one that would endure, and now he'd lost everything in a matter of moments before he'd really had time to accept that nobody had agreed with his vision in the end.

It didn't bring back her lost love, or the various members of her adopted species who had fallen in the name of her father's rage at the failure of his twisted desire for power, but it was fundamentally satisfying to know that his insane vendetta was over. With Amelia now aware of the truth of the vampire/lycan blood feud, and Selene's tentative new relationship with Michael confirming that things weren't as black-and-white as some people on both sides might have believed, they had a real chance to forge some kind of peace…

Turning around, Sonja sighed in frustration as she saw Amelia and Raze now back on their feet, each glaring at the other as though waiting for their 'adversary' to strike first.

She knew that centuries of habit were hard to break, but they could have at least _tried _not to assume the worst of the other once the fight was over…

"That's _enough_," she said, walking forward to glare between the two; she might not be Amelia's elder, but her connection to Viktor should allow her some respect from her unofficial 'aunt', and her history with Raze went without saying. "I understand that this is an unprecedented situation, but we've just dealt with the real cause of this war; don't ruin that by attacking each other because of his propaganda."

For a moment, Raze and Amelia continued to glare at each other, but finally Amelia nodded in acknowledgement and relaxed her stance, followed by Raze doing the same.

"You're right," Amelia said grimly, even as she continued to look apprehensively at Raze. "Whatever happened in the past… we're not at war right now."

"It's not going to be easy," Selene said, walking up to the others as she looked grimly over at Viktor's fallen body, Michael padding up behind her like a lycan bodyguard (She noted some unconscious bodies lying behind Selene, but this wasn't the time to worry about that; if they weren't dead, they'd be fine soon enough, and compassion might help their case). "Whatever else Viktor had done, he was still an Elder…"

"Which is why we need to awaken Marcus and inform him of the realities of the situation facing us," Amelia said resolutely. "After such an unprecedented situation, it is only fitting that Marcus and I should confer on these matters together."

"Are you sure-?" Selene began.

"Believe me," Amelia said, shaking her head slightly as she looked reassuringly at Selene, "while Viktor was always in favour of the vampires, and I have expressed my past loyalty to the humans more than once, you will find that Marcus is… somewhat more sympathetic to lycans than you might imagine."

"Marcus?" Sonja said, looking at Amelia in surprise, Michael and Raze each cocking their heads slightly as they studied the Elder curiously. "Why would _he _sympathise with the lycans?"

"That is a story I think Marcus should decide to tell you himself," Amelia responded, before she indicated the door leading to the exit. "We should get moving right now anyway; if we get back to the mansion in time, we can ensure that our allies are holding down the fort while we deal with the main issues."


	15. The Fall of Marcus

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

Standing around the coffin containing Marcus, Selene had to confess to a certain sense of deja-vu; she'd awakened Viktor only a couple of days ago, and now here she was, witnessing the Awakening of another Elder.

Granted, this occasion should theoretically be more straightforward than Viktor's Awakening had been, since Amelia had training in performing this kind of ceremony, but it was still going to be a very difficult experience considering everything that had happened.

After instructing the other Death Eaters to finish rounding up the remaining lycans with orders not to kill any of them, leaving Khan in charge after Selene had vouched for him, Amelia had returned to the mansion with Selene, Sonja, Michael and Raze; the two lycans had returned to human form after the fighting was over, but Selene in particular had felt that they would be safer with them rather than leaving them behind, particularly if any of the Death Dealers started to suspect their role in Viktor's death.

Even if Amelia had vouched for them and there were no existing records of Raze's appearance, it was easy to see that Michael and Raze were each exceptionally powerful lycans in their own right, which had raised several questions about what they were doing at the manor when they arrived. Amelia's presence and Selene's publically-redeemed reputation was a fairly good means of deterring questions, but Sonja's anomalous scent would raise questions if people paid her too much attention, which meant that getting Marcus's support was vital.

With that in mind, the five of them had quickly headed for the Elders' chamber in the mansion basement, with Sonja activating the system that would allow Marcus's coffin to emerge. Since haste was a necessity by any standard, Amelia had forgone the usual speech and ritual of the traditional Awakening in favour of getting down to business as soon as possible. With the coffin raised and positioned, she bit into her wrist and held the wound over the pipe system that fed the blood into Marcus's mouth. His eyes opened as the blood trickled into his mouth, but then he lay still as the others moved him into the support chair linked up to the new feeding system that would provide him with fresh blood to restore his strength.

Once the last of the tubes had been connected to the Elder, the two vampires, two lycans and one hybrid stood back and watched in solemn silence for a few moments, waiting for any sign of life from her fellow leader. After a few moments of silent study, Marcus finally opened his eyes and looked around the room before his gaze settled on Amelia.

"Ah," he said, smiling politely at her despite his decrepit appearance, his body already looking slightly firmer than the stiff mess it had been at first. "Amelia, my dear… you _have _had an interesting few days, haven't you?"

"For a great many reasons, as you have doubtless observed, Marcus," Amelia replied, looking solemnly back at her fellow Elder. "I acknowledge that under normal circumstances I should be preparing for my own internment now, but considering the unprecedented situation facing us I felt it would be more advisable for me to remain available until things are more stable."

"Of course, of course," Marcus said, chuckling slightly as he studied Sonja. "Viktor's daughter, a living hybrid of the species… all because of her love of a lycan… Who would have believed it…?"

"It wasn't exactly easy," Sonja noted, suddenly feeling uncomfortable under the third Elder's gaze as he studied her. "We only managed to get this far with a sample of Michael's blood; he's a direct descendant of Alexander Corvinus's mortal child."

"Really?" Marcus said, looking over at Michael with a smile. "So… our bloodline can bring them all together…"

"Yeah…" Michael said, looking uncertainly at Marcus.

"How interesting…" Marcus said, chuckling slightly as he looked at his many-times great-nephew before he turned back to Amelia. "And you say that Viktor is dead?"

"If you've received her memories, you know that Viktor deserved his fate," Selene said firmly.

"Oh, believe me, Viktor deserved his fate many times over," Marcus said, looking at her with a suddenly thoughtful manner. "A terrible business, the slaying of your family back then… and yet so much effort was put into concealing it from Amelia and I…"

"We all kept secrets from each other, Marcus; I'm sure you have things you never told us either-" Amelia began.

"But this is something else…" Marcus interjected, looking contemplatively at Selene before his gaze shifted to Michael and Raze. "And now, I learn that I always had the potential to be more than this…"

Almost before any of them could react, Marcus practically lunged from his chair and grabbed for Raze, moving with a speed that astounded Selene when she compared it to what she'd seen of Viktor during his own recent Awakening. For a moment, the rest of the people in the room could only watch in shock as the Elder grabbed Raze's head and forced it towards his neck, the lycan opening his mouth in a confused roar, but Sonja grabbed Raze around the waist and hauled him away before his teeth could make contact with Marcus's throat.

"What the _Hell_?" Michael said, looking at his great-plus uncle in shock. "What are you _doing_-?"

Michael's speech was interrupted as Marcus turned to lunge towards him, only to be cut short when Selene stepped forward and slammed the base of her gun into his forehead, sending him staggering backwards once again. As Marcus fell backwards, Amelia stepped forward to grab him by the shoulders before biting down at his throat before he could strike back, taking deep mouthfuls of his blood before she stepped back, staring at her fellow leader in contempt.

"You wanted to _let him out_?" she said, glaring incredulously at the first vampire. "It's been over a thousand years; what will it _take _for you to accept that he can't be controlled?"

"As a hybrid…" Marcus gasped.

"He's been an animal for far longer than he was ever a man; even if the transformation could change that, I doubt there's enough left of who he was to give him any degree of control," Amelia said, still glaring coldly at Marcus before she sighed in frustration, drew her sword, and charged towards Marcus, impaling him in the heart before he could get to safety. For a moment, Marcus simply stared at Amelia in shock, as though he couldn't believe what had just happened, but then the light faded from his eyes, leaving the first Elder to fall to the ground as Amelia withdrew her sword.

"Well," Sonja said, shaking her head as she looked grimly at Marcus's corpse. "_That _is going to make things complicated…"

"Why did you stab him?" Raze asked curiously.

"If I'd shot him, people could argue that I'd shot him while he was still in hibernation to stage a coup and enforce my own ideas; this way, there might still be doubt, but at least I can confirm that I killed Marcus in direct combat while he was awake rather than executing him while he slept," Amelia explained, indicating the amount of blood spatter on her sword and clothes.

"So… why did you _kill _him?" Michael asked uncertainly. "I mean, he was being a bit of a creep, but…"

"He intended to release his brother William from the prison where he has been kept for almost a thousand years with the goal of turning him into a hybrid and setting themselves up as rulers of everything," Amelia explained grimly. "Once we established that hybrids were possible, he had already decided to set himself up as the lord of a new race now that the vampires had proven to be 'failures' for the general loyalty to Viktor over him; it was clear from his thoughts that he intended to eliminate all of us and then move on."

"Ah," Michael said, looking grimly at the body of his fallen ancestor.

"And just _talking _to him wasn't an option?" Selene asked.

"When I fed from him I confirmed that Marcus was blinded by his own affection for the memory of the brother who risked his life to save him from the rabid wolf that turned him into what he became," Amelia said grimly. "Believe me, William had over six centuries to try and overcome his feral instincts, and all he did was tear through the country while we cleaned up his mess; Viktor only avoided killing him at the time because he wanted to keep the lycans as his slaves, but after centuries of isolation, I doubt that William will be anything other than animal."

"Right…" Michael said, nodding in awkward understanding before he looked back down at Marcus's corpse. "It's… gonna take time to get used to that."

"Hold on to that," Selene said, looking at Michael with a warm smile. "Your compassion was the first thing I noticed about you."

At the brief compliment, Michael and Selene exchanged warm smiles before Amelia coughed to bring their attention back to her.

"It's actually ironic," the female Elder mused, glancing thoughtfully over the other four people in the room. "Before this all happened, I was looking forward to a rest after the strife of the last century, and now I find myself in a position where I cannot rest in order to ensure our survival."

"I'm… sorry," Selene said, looking sympathetically at the last Elder left, before she assumed a more serious expression. "So… with Marcus out of the picture, what do we do now?"

"I can provide blood memories to ensure that the council accepts my testimony regarding Marcus's plans, and the survival of Sonja proves that Viktor was lying about what happened that night," Amelia explained. "After that, we have to focus on putting things together so that there will be no further conflict between us and the lycans; with Viktor dead, the primary catalyst for the blood feud has ended at our end, but there may still be some individual issues to overcome…"

"Actually," Sonja said, smiling as she looked over at Michael and Selene, "I have an idea about how we could deal with _that _particular issue…"


	16. Peace in Our Time

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Vampire Leader

Standing at the side of the small church that they had selected for this ceremony, Sonja felt profoundly touched at the memory of her own small 'ceremony' with Lucian.

It had been a completely unofficial union, of course- the two just exchanging vows over a hastily-acquired flask of wine in an old chapel that had been virtually abandoned once everyone in the castle became vampires- but it had been more than enough for them, after all that they had gone through to acknowledge their feelings for each other. This current ceremony was larger, but the central premise was still the same as the two species came together, even if this was the first time that such a union was acknowledged.

Once the rest of the covens had returned to their respective bases, the small group had shared the true origins of the war with the rest of the vampire coven and the assorted surviving werewolves, including Viktor's own role in triggering the conflict. While some vampires had naturally agreed with the deceased Elder's decision and been angered at his death, Amelia's support and Sonja's own ties to Lucian had been enough to convince the majority of the population that Viktor had been motivated by nothing more than blind prejudice rather than having a genuine reason for his hatred.

After the initial crisis was over, Michael had briefly thought about making contact with his family, but had swiftly concluded that it made more sense for him to just drop off the map now rather than draw it out and raise questions when they noticed that he was no longer aging. He'd paid a brief visit to his apartment to collect a few photographs and clothes that he wanted to keep with him for sentimental reasons, but with the police having taken his passport and wallet where he'd left them before his first real meeting with Raze and Selene, he'd decided to just leave a message with a friend of his from the hospital to ask him to donate his old textbooks to some other student before leaving the apartment for good.

As much as Selene and Sonja regretted that Michael had to abandon his family because of them, they'd each been grateful that he'd come to the decision to do so himself. In the long run, Michael had decided that it would be easier for his family to believe he'd just decided to withdraw from everything on his own after the pressure of his assorted losses became too much for him, rather than draw out the process until people started to wonder why he wasn't aging any more.

On a broader scale, things were going through even further changes among the immortal society. While there would always be some tension between the two sides, the lycans had always been kept fairly informed about the way the vampires had treated their ancestors,

The Elder had even made contact with Andreas Tanis once she had learned about his contact with Sonja, offering him his old position back in exchange for him presenting a less biased view of the vampires' history with the lycans that was willing to explore what both sides did wrong. While Sonja's contact with him had been limited even when she'd turned to him for weapons, Tanis revealed that he'd often suspected that she'd survived the early stages of the war even if Raze had never told him anything explicit when they met, and had agreed to her offer in return for his previously-promised position on the re-established council.

The decision to arrange for the current wedding between Selene and Michael had been somewhat impulsive, but the Death Dealer and the medical intern had spent time talking beforehand and were each intrigued at the possibilities of taking their relationship further beyond their initially-acknowledged attraction. With their relationship proving that the vampires and lycans could work together in peace, each had recognised the symbolic value of their union at this point.

As Amelia spoke the final words of the ceremony, Selene and Michael shared their first kiss as a married couple, being met with initially-tentative but gradually-growing applause as the two sides of the ceremony watched them come together. Most of the lycans were relatively neutral in their applause, congratulating Michael out of necessity more than anything else, but a few of the vampires were actively smiling at the idea of Selene having finally found someone; Khan in particular seemed to be very amused at this twist.

Standing off to the side, Sonja smiled at the sight before her; even if a part of her wished that it could have been her marriage to Lucian that brought them all together, she could accept that someone else was playing the key role in this final resolution, particularly if she still achieved the peace that she was really after.

Once all the legalities had been dealt with- and any serious dissenters to the new status quo had been dealt with- Sonja had been elevated to the position of joint leader of the new unified coven with Amelia. Although officially their seconds-in-command for both species, Raze and Selene had agreed to act in an officially secondary role as their enforcers to reaffirm the joint nature of this new coven and the importance of preserving their fragile peace. Despite his youth, Michael was also a member of the new council, as his main purpose would be a diplomatic one, both sides reasoning that he could provide a relatively neutral perspective in future conflicts as he had never really fought alongside the lycans even before his marriage to Selene.

It wasn't the conclusion to the war that Sonja had spent years expecting and preparing for- if she was totally honest with herself, she'd been expecting that she'd have to destroy all three Elders and then spend her life tearing the remaining vampires apart- but she was actually far more satisfied with this resolution than she had expected. Viktor's crimes had been exposed, peace had been established between her adopted and her birth species, and she had finally witnessed the 'birth' of the thing that her father had tried so hard to destroy.

And who knew? With Michael and Selene's marriage, combined with their particularly potent bloodlines, there may be a more natural hybrid birth in the not-too-distant future…


End file.
